Digital imaging technologies have enhanced archaeological research and profoundly expanded the scale of the discipline’s potentialities. As illustrators and archaeologists move away from using hand-drawn images (of hand-held, real-life objects) to depict artifacts and other archaeological information, certain capabilities of the traditional illustrative process are lost. One such loss is the ability to present a complete and informed representation of an artifact free of the distortions and visual limitations that single-perspective (i.e., digital or photographic) imagery produces. This is accomplished by the illustrator through the unification of multiple views of the artifact from various perspectives into a single two-dimensional image that communicates to the viewer important attributes of the artifact, free of distortion and remaining true to the measured, analytical conventions of the illustrative process. Liberation from the single-viewpoint perspective was one of the fundamental elements of the Cubist movement. Traditional archaeological illustrators utilize Cubist principles to communicate visually to the viewer a complete, accurate, and undistorted package of information about an artifact. The supplanting of hand-drawn illustrations by digital images in today’s archaeological publications threatens to revert the visual representation of data back to uninformed, surficial “snapshots” of incomplete objects.

Overall healing, harmony, and balance within Ndee (Apache) communities can be understood through the Ndee term Gózhó—“beauty, balance, and harmony.” Beyond this Ndee cultural precept, however, how are such states of Gózhó achieved, whether in the past or today? Within archaeological research on Ndee lands, achieving healing and promoting health is crucial to overall individual and community well-being. Healing activities that contribute to overall states of Gózhó can take many forms. As Rybak and Decker-Fitts (2009:334) suggest, “Native American healing practices exemplify key cultural perspectives and influence the identity development of Native American individuals.” Such healing practices including the use of yellow cattail pollen (hádńdín; Typha spp.) for protection are based on traditions and perspectives typically outside the mainstream of Western psychological tenets, yet they can have significant impact on the sense of well-being for Ndee communities. Ndee cultural specialists with the White Mountain Apache Tribe demonstrate that such traditions and perspectives are not only necessary for continued community well-being but are powerful conduits amplifying the past as present, which contribute to the ongoing cyclical and reciprocal nature of the ways Ndee communities have related to Nígosdzán—Mother Earth—since time immemorial.

Moving image archives—like many other archives—are considered a passive repository of knowledge extraction, rather than an active site of knowledge production. Following the premise that archives are indeed a source of knowledge production, this article explores how moving image archives have the potential to produce new and alternative knowledges by bringing to light factors that may have influenced archaeological practice, factors captured within a moving image archive but obscured or marginalized within linear accounts of this practice. While such an archive may exist unevenly, the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) has been historically positioned to develop a moving image archive that features a number of well-known archaeological investigations. Yet this archive and similar moving image archives remain overlooked and underutilized resources. In order to address this, emphasis is placed on producing detailed, searchable, and retrievable content description for moving image archives. In doing so, this article maintains that the knowledge and experience brought to the management of this archive following the author's transition “from archaeologist to archivist,” is key to promoting the discoverability and accessibility of this archive with potential clients in the archaeological, academic, and broader community.

In 2006, the World Bank's private sector lending arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), introduced eight Environmental and Social Performance Standards (PSs) to define IFC clients’ responsibilities for managing their environmental and social risks, including those related to cultural heritage. Since their introduction, the PSs have evolved into a de facto global standard that other development banks and many private sector banks, insurers, and development proponents have voluntarily adopted to help manage their own risk exposure. Although the widespread adoption of such policies can be viewed positively as a reflection of good governance, the PSs were never designed with this purpose in mind. This article traces the development of cultural heritage policy within the World Bank Group, then critically examines the IFC PSs as they relate to cultural heritage, drawing attention to the elements in need of revision to better reflect internationally recognized good practice for the management of cultural heritage. Equally important, we recommend the development and implementation of a bespoke cultural heritage framework for the private sector.

The Hacienda El Progreso functioned as an important Ecuadorian agro-industrial enterprise in the late nineteenth century. Operating out of San Cristóbal Island in the Galápagos archipelago, the plantation exported refined sugar, coffee, cattle products, and other goods to national and international markets. From its beginnings in the 1860s, the plantation established the first permanent human settlement on the island, and long after its demise in the 1930s, it continues to exert an important influence in local culture. Contemporary communities of San Cristóbal are shaping their identities based on the historical importance of the hacienda. The summer of 2018 was our last field season. From its start, the Historical Ecology of the Galápagos Islands project involved close participation with communal authorities and town leaders to investigate the island's human past. In this article, we discuss legacy and services of our project in the contemporary setting of Galápagos. We examine the relevance and contributions of our project to education, heritage policies, and the local economy. We discuss lessons learned from interactions and collaborations between archaeologists and the local community, and we evaluate the consequences of implementing an archaeological project on a remote environmental sanctuary where interest in human history can collide with the agendas of nature conservation and a lucrative ecotourism industry.

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration are undertaking a long-term, multiphase project to improve and rebuild Interstate 95 (I-95) in Pennsylvania, within the historic city of Philadelphia. Given the complex urban setting, the archaeological subsurface testing for the I-95 Girard Avenue Interchange Improvement Project is being guided by a programmatic agreement under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act and a categorical exclusion under the National Environmental Policy Act. Through data-recovery excavations, the contractor for the project, AECOM, has documented 30 historical-period and Native American archaeological sites. The project includes its own professional journal, live interactive reporting, and a public archaeology center.

With its promise of nondestructive processing, rapid low-cost sampling, and portability to any field site or museum in the world, portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF) spectrometry is rapidly becoming a standard piece of equipment for archaeologists. Even though the use of pXRF is becoming standard, the publication of pXRF analytical methods and the resulting data remains widely variable. Despite validation studies that demonstrate the importance of sample preparation, data collection settings, and data processing, there remains no standard for how to report pXRF results. In this article, we address the need for best practices in publishing pXRF analyses. We outline information that should be published alongside interpretive results in any archaeological application of pXRF. By publishing this basic information, archaeologists will increase the transparency and replicability of their analyses on an inter-analyst/inter-analyzer basis and provide clarity for journal editors and peer reviewers on publications and grant proposals for studies that use pXRF. The use of these best practices will result in better science in the burgeoning use of pXRF in archaeology.

Managing collections means ensuring that the data about them are useful, available, and accurate. In addition to the technical aspects of data management, there are layers of political and social structure that direct the construction and use of collections data. The Minnesota Historical Society (MNHS) employs a set of data standards that allows us to gather electronic cataloging data from a wide community of archaeology researchers who are depositing collections at our institution. Though met with initial resistance, these standards have facilitated publication in Open Context as linked open data. Furthermore, institutional discussions concerning Creative Commons licensing and the cultural sensitivity of collections data were precipitated by publication, highlighting the role of social agreement in data management. We found that successful employment of data standards must take into account the needs of the various stakeholders and further their interests. Standards will be most useful and successful when they are lightweight, are supported by training and documentation, and exist as part of a system that allows for more than one way to characterize the collections.

Although we, as archaeologists, recognize the value in teaching nonprofessionals about our discipline and the knowledge it generates about the human condition, there are few of these specialists compared to the number of archaeologists practicing today. In this introductory article to the special section titled “Touching the Past to Learn the Past,” we suggest that, because of our unique training as anthropologists and archaeologists, each of us has the potential to contribute to public archaeology education. By remembering our archaeological theory, such as social memory, we can use the artifacts we engage with on a daily basis to bridge the disconnect between what the public hopes to gain from our interactions and what we want to teach them. In this article, we outline our perspective and present an overview of the other three articles in this section that apply this approach in their educational endeavors.

In the 54 years since passage of the National Historic Preservation Act, more than 56 million ha of land have been surveyed in the United States, and nearly one million cultural resources have been identified and recorded. These efforts have produced hundreds of thousands of project reports, vast collections of data, and a wealth of descriptive information about the past. The accumulated data can be used to generate important new knowledge about the past, with many scientific and management implications, but remain largely untapped. Following current approaches, many resources will be damaged or lost before effective strategies for studying or preserving them can be developed. Synthesis and modeling are needed in creative mitigation efforts to identify which resources to preserve and study and how best to do so with limited time and funding. This article explores the potential for compiling and synthesizing large cultural and environmental datasets within a geographic information system to model the nature and distribution of cultural resources. It is argued that dedicated synthesis and modeling of cultural resource management data will allow development of more effective and proactive research and management strategies, providing lasting benefit to diverse scientific and traditional communities and the public.

As archaeology has evolved, partnerships between private collectors and archaeologists have ebbed and flowed. This article contributes to a growing body of work dedicated to recognizing the contributions of the collecting community, with a focus on maintaining reciprocal models for long-term collaborations. This research article argues that for these collaborative efforts to progress, archaeologists must operate through an archaeological ethnographic lens that fosters work in partnership and generative dialogues. Utilizing ethics from the Society for American Archaeology's “Statement on Responsible and Responsive Stewards of the Past” (Society for American Archaeology 2018), an undergraduate student and private collector partnered to retroactively document an artifact collection collected over 60 years in Colorado's San Luis Valley. This article is distinct, however, in that it centers the research methods, offering a pragmatic example of utilizing an archaeological ethnographic framework alongside collaborative inquiry and oral history methodologies. The partnership cultivated within the research team opened a new line of inquiry into the collector's past collaborations with professionals, revealing a variety of informative and illuminating stories. As the academic discourse widens, incorporating such stories into the canon will improve collaborations and foster networks of partners to create sustainable long-term collaborations that ultimately lead to greater understanding of and care for the material past.

The reconstruction and representation of ancient artifacts and scenes through illustration is a cornerstone in the communication of archaeological findings. Sketches of the past have transformed over time, incorporating broader technological changes, from photography to the digital tools that have become prevalent through the twenty-first century. Most recently, developments in generative artificial intelligence (AI) promise to reshape the way we represent the past to professional and public audiences. This article shows how to use an accessible and inexpensive artificial intelligence platform to generate complex archaeological illustrations. As a case study, we create multiple scenes representing competing hypotheses about Neanderthal behavior. Using the images to visually communicate alternative hypotheses, we demonstrate how archaeological illustration using artificial intelligence promises to democratize the production of visual representations of the past.

Although the legal conditions are perceived as restrictive, metal detecting has become a popular activity in the Czech Republic. In 2017, a questionnaire survey revealed that a significant segment of this community is made up of passionate people interested in history and archaeology. The majority of professional archaeologists consider metal-detecting finds to be important and believe that cooperation with metal detectorists is necessary, beneficial, and acceptable. A collaborative project called “Joint Forces in Order to Discover the Common Archaeological Heritage of the South Moravian Region” aims to create conditions for citizen science among the metal detectorists in the region. By using tools such as expert workshops for the employees of professional institutions, meetings, educational workshops and field activities with interested members of the public, and production and distribution of printed and digital information materials, the partners in the program have long endeavored to improve the mutual understanding of all relevant actors of society and administration. The creation of circles of citizen collaborators is in progress in several archaeological institutions; nevertheless, this process is far from over. In 2020, with the creation of the Portal of Amateur Collaborators, this activity acquired a unified digital scheme for the registration of finds.

The articles in this issue present bioarchaeological case studies from across the globe, including North and Central America, East Asia, Europe, and the Near East. Some bioarchaeology projects are new and others are decades old, but common challenges emerge as researchers apply conservation standards to real situations in the field: a lack of training or resources for long-term curation of human remains, the lag between excavation and analysis of remains, and environmental challenges that include melting permafrost, tropical storms, and a variety of pests such as molds, fungi, bats, snakes, and insects. The studies also address ethical considerations about the use of digital images of human remains, molecular and isotopic methods that require the destruction of human tissue samples, the ability of fast-paced cultural resource management (CRM) projects to address the needs of descendant communities, and the responsibility that we have to the people we study. Techniques for addressing these challenges include new computer programs, more advanced photographic software, and research on the effects of conservation techniques that provide new “standards” for bioarchaeologists. We highlight the importance of each contribution and discuss the future of conservation in bioarchaeology.

In the push to provide further interaction with museum and heritage exhibitions, the internet has become an established venue, offering nearly unlimited space and options for providing extensions to in-person content. These internet-based supplements in many cases outlast the physical displays they are meant to accompany. After the exhibitions have closed and the museums have moved on, the digital content remains, a static placeholder for a particular viewpoint on heritage, curation, and public outreach. Such is the case with the Interface Experience, the Web extension to the exhibition of the same name, which ran for a few months in 2015 (Bard Graduate Center [BGC] 2014a). This site, which remains largely functional, is now disconnected from the exhibition it was meant to accompany, leaving it to stand alone as a study on the connections between digital outputs and materiality.

This article introduces datplot, an R package designed to prepare chronological data for visualization, focusing on the treatment of objects dated to overlapping periods of time. Datplot is suitable for all disciplines in which scientists long for a synoptic method that enables the visualization of the chronology of a collection of heterogeneously dated objects. It is especially helpful for visualizing trends in object assemblages over long periods of time—for example, the development of pottery styles—and it can also assist in the dating of stratigraphy. As both authors come from the field of classical archaeology, the examples and case study demonstrating the functionality of the package analyze classical materials. In particular, we focus on presenting an assemblage of epigraphic evidence from Bithynia (northwestern Turkey), with a microregional focal point in the territory of Nicaea (modern Iznik). In the article, we present the internal methodology of datplot and the process of preparing a dataset of categorically and numerically dated objects. We demonstrate visualizing the data prepared by datplot using kernel density estimation and compare the outcome with more established methods such as histograms and line graphs.

This article considers the relevance of the Society for American Archaeology's 2018 “Statement on Collaboration with Responsible and Responsive Stewards of the Past” for imported antiquities (specifically, “classical” ones—that is, from Mediterranean regions). Various practical, legal, and ethical differences between collecting imported versus domestic objects make it difficult to identify “responsive and responsible stewards” of the former. An obstacle to responsible stewardship of privately owned classical collections—and to collaboration between classical archaeologists and collectors—is the 2008 acquisition guidelines issued by the two leading professional organizations in the museum field. I argue that the best home for unprovenienced and poorly provenienced antiquities collections is in university museums, where their complicated object biographies can be fully researched, taught, and displayed.

Conducting archaeological fieldwork increasingly relies on “high-tech” instruments. These include such technologies as portable X-ray diffraction; ground penetrating radar; high-precision global navigation satellite system (GNSS) receivers; laser scanners; multispectral, thermal, lidar, and hyperspectral instruments on Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAVs); and many others. Using these devices internationally can present complex issues with export regulations and the potential for duties and value-added taxes. In short, there are many regulations affecting the movement of these devices across international borders. In the past, archaeologists had interactions with customs personnel and faced the complexities of import and export laws at the end of a project, as they dealt with the issues of taking samples or artifacts out of a country for study. Today's archaeologists must be prepared before they even begin their travel to ensure that their equipment and software can travel overseas. This article provides a practical overview of the laws, regulations, and practices affecting international transport of the archaeological high-tech tool kit.

Archaeologists are taught about the importance of professional recordation and our ethical obligations to those associated records and data. These teachings imply that practitioners are meeting a professional standard of recordation that will stand the test of time, but the ongoing digital revolution is changing the way records and data are created and preserved. Best practices for the management and use of digital archaeological records have been published, and devoted digital archives offer these services. However, the ability of traditional archaeological repositories to adopt best practices or pay for digital curation is poorly understood. This article presents the results of a survey asking how the flood of digital records and data has impacted the ability of archaeological repositories to collect, manage, preserve, use, and make accessible digital archaeological records and data. Are repositories adopting the best practices that have been outlined? What kinds of challenges do repositories face regarding digital records and data? Are they being overcome successfully? The survey results offer a snapshot of current practice and point to future directions that should be pursued to ensure that the discipline is meeting its professional obligations.