Archaeology is the study of the traces people from the past have left behind, both artifacts and less direct remains, which are then used to reconstruct how ancient societies functioned: politics, art, religion, economy, crafts, entertainment, etc. It takes dedication, specialization and painstaking study. Indiana Jones needn’t apply. As an academic profession it has an ivory tower tendency, esp. in the Ancient Near Eastern specialization. Leaving the cozy confines of academic publishing is hard for its practitioners. Throughout their training, they have been conditioned to be meticulous and exhaustive in their recordkeeping, annotating, analyzing and, above all, publishing. Add to that the relentless pressure of “(Peer-reviewed) publish or perish” and the long tradition of jealously-guarded exclusive rights to hard-won field data gathered under often difficult circumstances, and you can see how the new open-access movement has not taken this specialization by storm yet.
Academic publishing
There are, however, some factors working in its favor. Foremost, academically-published archaeological reports and journals are hardly ever a commercial business in the first place. Journals and series serve rather as a way to mark territory and as an outlet for the research of the academic staff of an institution. Many copies are exchanged for other institutions’ publications in an old-fashioned barter system. Nevertheless, a lot of overhead goes into producing actual paper versions of these publications, which don’t always get the wide distribution the content deserves. But, a book that hasn’t been read cannot be cited; an artifact that hasn’t been viewed, and whose description and stratigraphic context hasn’t been taken into account, cannot be compared with a similar one from a different excavation. Online publishing (either exclusively, in addition to print publication, or at least online publishing of photographs, diagrams and other illustrations which are very expensive to reproduce on paper) is a logical step to reduce the cost of academic publishing. Online publishing also facilitates open access, which enhances the impact of publications. A recent study found that open access actually increased the likelihood of scientific articles being cited (S. Harnad and T. Brody, “Comparing the Impact of Open Access (OA) vs. Non-OA Articles in the Same Journals,” in D-Lib Magazine, 10, 6 (2004)).
Some, but not many, scholars are moving toward providing open access usually to their more recent articles on their personal web pages, e.g., Dr. Thierry Petit. This is usually a personal initiative. Quite a few journals are now putting their runs online, back issues and all, e.g., American Journal of Archaeology, Journal of the Ancient Near Eastern Society. Truly open-access, online-only academic journals are less common. One example is the Journal of Biblical Studies (not purely archaeological). FOLD&R (Fasti On Line Documents & Research) does away with another vestige of its paper predecessors in that each article forms an issue all by itself no matter how short.
When it comes to monographs, i.e., full excavation reports of major excavations, institutional support is still pivotal. For instance, the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago has in co-operation with the ETANA project put an impressive number of its influential archaeological tomes from the past on the web and is continuing to do so for new volumes. ETANA (Electronic Texts and Ancient Near Eastern Archives) is striving to make core books for the study of ancient Mesopotamia available on the web. It is run by a consortium of professional organizations and universities. For the works still under copyright, they have obtained permission so as to allow for unfettered use of all 264 books by anyone for noncommercial teaching and research purposes. It is supplemented by Abzu which “is a guide to networked open access data relevant to the study and public presentation of the Ancient Near East and the Ancient Mediterranean world.” Abzu currently has indexed over 1,500 books and a much larger number of articles, all freely accessible on the web.
Looting the cradle
The Iraq War has shaken the field of Ancient Near Eastern archaeology to its core. The dire consequences for the archaeological heritage of this Cradle of Civilization (first cities, writing, etc.) have been amply documented in the media. The Iraq War & Archaeology open-access project was instrumental in providing free and continuous summaries and reviews of articles and other information published on the web (2003-2006). Scholars had advised the US government in detail on the dangers ahead regarding archaeological sites, museums and artifacts. We now know for a fact that those warnings and that information were ignored nigh wholesale. The looting of sites since 2003 is on a much larger scale than that which took place during the post-Gulf War embargo years of the 1990s and early 2000s when central government control was already weakened and poverty increasing.
As part of a USAID grant to assist Iraqi universities in rebuilding their archaeology programs and collections, Stony Brook University (SUNY) digitized important books for the study of Mesopotamian archaeology (“ETANA Expands its Core Texts,” in SBL Forum, [June 16-August 3, 2006]). Again, an open-access approach to replace burnt down library resources through the web. Basically, the focus of the Western assistance to colleagues in Iraq has been to prepare them as much as possible for picking up the pieces and to hit the ground running when a modicum of normalcy returns to their battered country. Special attention was paid to training of archaeologists, conservators and other heritage professionals, upgrading and providing equipment, planning site conservation and management infrastructure (including GPS). Many other institutions have been involved in this besides the ones already mentioned: the Global Heritage Fund, the Getty Conservation Institute, the British Museum, etc.
Special mention needs to be made of the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute’s online open-access project Lost Treasures From Iraq. When news of the looting of the famous National Museum in Baghdad hit in April 2003, this database of its holdings was conceived to help with the recovery efforts. Many thousands of artifacts had been stolen and the catalogue was, if not destroyed, definitely in a state of total disarray. Also, customs and police services around the world needed to learn quickly what Mesopotamian artifacts really looked like. It is still used today as a superb learning tool by all kinds of users. In 2003, a private initiative was also started: the Iraq Museum International. It tried to rally support for Iraq’s heritage, even envisioning a virtual version of the museum, with interactive features and so on. As so many initiatives, it lost traction when the horrid reality in Iraq crushed many hopes and dreams. It did experiment with outside-user-contributed, open-access content with some interesting results, e.g., a study of looting patterns through satellite photos.
In short, open access is a small but growing phenomenon in Ancient Near Eastern archaeology. The crisis brought on by the Iraq War brought into sharp focus the need for higher accessibility to resources on Mesopotamia. The crisis also served as a global “wake up call” to make an imperative of documenting and sharing cultural heritage, and open-access, web-delivered content is one extremely promising avenue to achieve this.
tags: international culture archaeology ancient-near-east open-access local-context-global-commons
|
send
printer-friendly version