Theme:
3. Heritage Narratives and Representations
Session format:
Discussion session (with formal abstracts)
Title:
A Controlled Vocabulary for Archaeology: A Necessary Requirement for the Development of a Sustainable Research Practice into the 21st Century
Content:
Do archaeologists need a controlled vocabulary?
Controlled vocabularies are agreed sets of single- or multiple-word phrases used as key terms for elements of research. These exist for other disciplines, such as psychology, chemistry and astronomy, with agreed sets of standardised keywords for journal articles,
Controlled vocabularies are not fixed sets of terms; they are periodically and dynamically reviewed to include new terms and to cover the international application of scientific techniques within a discipline and their associated evidence.
Existing archaeological vocabularies are partial, fragmented and used in isolated research communities. And simultaneously, archaeological research grows in size. Far more than 100,000 archaeological articles have been published since 1960, with the total number of research outputs doubling every 7 to 10 years. By 2030 metadata will exist for at least 200,000 published documents and possibly as many as 600,000. Yet this still severely underestimates the real number, as no more than 30% of published academic literature is currently tracked on databases such as Web of Science, Scopus or Lens, with indexing biased towards publications in English and major developed world journals. More importantly still, this does not include metadata on research documents generated by development-led archaeology.
A controlled vocabulary, therefore, might ensure a consistency of descriptions of archaeological research, and could potentially be a necessary first step for the development of a database of document metadata for archaeology that will hold basic information on all archaeological research publications both applied (development-led) and academic.
We welcome papers that address any aspects of the possible development of, or the nature of a controlled vocabulary in archaeology. We would also welcome papers that discuss existing projects to develop vocabularies for archaeology, or that raise issues or problems that might make archaeology unsuitable for the development and introduction of a controlled vocabulary.
Keywords:
Controlled Vocabulary, Bibliometric metadata, sustainability, Grey literature
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
yes
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
Main organiser:
Anthony Sinclair (United Kingdom) 1
Co-organisers:
Kenneth Aitchison (United Kingdom) 2,1
Tom Brughmans (Denmark) 3
Affiliations:
1. University of Liverpool
2. Landward Research Ltd
3. University of Aarhus
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