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 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.

Writing for publication will be central to students’ future careers, so learning this skill should be integral to their graduate training. In a recent graduate seminar, we set up an assignment for which students would write a digital review (DR) and receive periodic feedback on their work through an innovative mock peer-review roundtable workshop. Each student wrote a DR intended for actual publication in the journal Advances in Archaeological Practice. Students worked closely with the instructor and the journal editor on their individual topics, outlines, and abstracts. They also peer-reviewed each other's drafts and discussed their feedback as part of the roundtable workshop, which simulated real reviewers. Finally, each student wrote cover letters and prepared images for submission to the journal. This exercise demystified the peer-review process for students who had little prior knowledge about publication, prepared students for responding to reviewer comments from varying viewpoints, and helped students understand the additional steps involved in publication. Although it was challenging to scale this exercise to a large class, we hope that others will also try and share results from these types of authentic real-world training experiments to advance graduate pedagogy in our discipline and beyond.

For much of its history, archaeological research has relied on site-specific projects, regional comparisons, and theory building from case studies. However, recent research themes concerning the emergence of complex social-ecological systems and long-term land-use legacies require a new approach to archaeological data. Large-scale syntheses of archaeological data provide an effective way forward to address these new research themes. In more concise terms, “big questions” require “big data” to help answer them. The archaeological information collected by the USDA Forest Service is one such “big dataset” and represents an incalculable investment in time, resources, and expertise. This article explores this concept and presents an R package (ArchaeoSRP) designed to extract archaeological information from USDA Forest Service site record files. We demonstrate the functionality of this R package through a case study examining the archaeological data for the Cle Elum Ranger District, within Central Washington's Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest. Our results reveal the efficiency of using automated methods to extract, organize, and synthesize district-level archaeological data, which, in turn, reveal patterns of precontact and historic land use that were otherwise not distinguishable.

For 15 years, the University of Idaho has conducted chemical testing of excavated materials from historical sites throughout North America. The most common artifacts tested are sealed containers. Some come from current excavations, but most are from repository shelves. The immediate purpose of the archaeochemistry work is twofold: to identify the contents of the containers for researchers and to provide training for students in analytical chemistry. After testing more than 500 items, project personnel have recognized some unexpected outcomes that have implications for institutions housing the artifacts. Specifically, tested materials identified the small, yet consistent, presence of certain artifacts that can have health implications for personnel working with the items. The article concludes with general guidance on identifying and assessing those risks.

We have all read the headlines heralding, often hyperbolically, the latest advances in text- and image-based Artificial Intelligence (AI). What is perhaps most unique about these developments is that they now make relatively good AI accessible to the average Internet user. These new services respond to human prompts, written in natural language, with generated output that appears to satisfy the prompt. Consequently, they are categorized under the term “generative AI,” whether they are generating text, images, or other media. They work by modeling human language statistically, to “learn” patterns from extremely large datasets of human-created content, with those that specifically focus on text therefore called Large Language Models (LLMs). As we have all tried products such as ChatGPT or Midjourney over the past year, we have undoubtedly begun to wonder how and when they might impact our archaeological work. Here, I review the state of this type of AI and the current challenges with using it meaningfully, and I consider its potential for archaeologists.

As the venues for professional training and education, universities have always shaped the future of the archaeological discipline—for better but also, in important ways, for worse. Historically, university structures promoted practitioner homogeneity and social inequity and, at the largest research-intensive universities, even managed to turn “service” into a dirty word. However, using the same structures that perpetuated damaging practices in the past, universities can just as readily transform archaeology into the inclusive, community-engaged discipline it should always have been—while serving communities in ways that matter to them. This article explains and illustrates how and why we have tried to do this through the founding and operation of the Oklahoma Public Archaeology Network (OKPAN) at the University of Oklahoma. OKPAN seeks to improve relationships among diverse Oklahoma communities by framing archaeology as a tool that that can serve communities’ interests while creating pathways within universities for members of historically excluded groups to join and help further transform the discipline.

This article provides an introduction to the theme issue “Archaeology of Service.” We explore how performing service in archaeology articulates with the concepts and practices of community-based archaeology, collaborative archaeology, and the Archaeologies of the Heart projects and their larger purposes of approaching work through a lens of social and environmental justice. We introduce seven articles that describe working in communities around the world, including the Bininj of the Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation in the Northwest Territory of Australia; the Bunun of the Lakulaku River Basin in Taiwan; the Passamaquoddy Nation in Maine (USA); people from 21 First Nations in the province of Ontario, Canada; the diverse communities of Oklahoma (USA); the African American community in Bolivar, Texas (USA); and the people of San Cristóbal Island in the Galápagos Islands, Ecuador. The articles are tied together by the common theme of collaborative work that is built through relationships of trust and is conducted in ways that strive to change the institutional and educational structures in which archaeology is practiced.

The Bolivar Archaeological Project exemplifies the possibilities of archaeology as service, incorporating descendant communities and local stakeholders into the fabric of the research design and planning for a state infrastructure project. This collaborative, multidisciplinary project attends to marginalized histories to offer a model for how publicly funded cultural resources management archaeology can serve multiple goals. The Bolivar Archaeological Project was conceived as a public archaeology project, with dual goals of being community driven and yielding scholarly contributions. In the shifting rural–urban landscape of Denton County, a Texas Department of Transportation road improvement project has supported archaeological investigations of two nineteenth-century sites—a blacksmith shop and hotel—associated with the historic Chisholm Trail. The blacksmith shop belonged to Tom Cook, an African American freedman, whose descendants reside nearby and became active participants in the investigations, including as collaborative authors in this article. The project illustrates the importance of representation and praxis to realize inclusive community engagement, with this article outlining the development of the project and ongoing research. Informed by Black feminist archaeologies, the project works at the intersections of local communities and state infrastructure while navigating landscapes of fraught histories and presents to forge an archaeology for the twenty-first century.

Many Indigenous groups in Taiwan, including the Bunun, inhabited remote mountainous regions. Beginning in the 1930s, all mountain settlements were relocated to lower-lying areas by the colonial authorities. These groups lost the territories where they used to hunt, practice slash-and-burn agriculture, and carry out other social and cultural practices. Having being separated from their ancestral lands for decades, their knowledge of their former settlements and traditional ways of life is gradually disappearing. In recent years, there is a tendency among the younger generation of Indigenous people to organize and participate in roots-seeking expeditions. As their knowledge about the former settlements is limited, they seek help from the elderly—and archaeologists. Since 2014, I have collaborated with Bunun communities, recording their ancestors’ lands in the Lakulaku River Basin by joining archaeological surveys on roots-seeking trips. During these surveys, I had to learn Bunun values and gain knowledge of the Lakulaku River Basin via the bodily experience of moving through and being in the landscape with its traditional inhabitants. By applying remote-sensing technologies such as airborne lidar in our surveys, our team managed to identify and record settlements that were unfamiliar to the Bunun.

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered the adoption of online education across all sectors worldwide, which was particularly challenging for disciplines that rely on hands-on learning such as bioarchaeology. Although the impacts of this rapid transition have been well investigated in fields such as anatomy and forensic anthropology, there has been little research into its effects within bioarchaeology. We address this deficit by investigating two common perceptions around online learning from a bioarchaeological perspective: (1) online techniques are inadequate for teaching practical skills, and (2) online learning environments lack a sense of community, thereby negatively affecting learner experiences. To gauge learner perceptions around online practical education in this field, we conducted a qualitative survey of participants in a bioarchaeology masterclass series. Results suggest that students perceive online learning to be as effective for practical training as in-person alternatives and that online learning may engender a sense of community when offered using a collaborative, interactive approach. Based on our results we provide several key recommendations for online education in bioarchaeology, including an active emphasis on social engagement and relationship building, culturally appropriate teaching, and the use of resources to encourage flexibility in learning. A Thai-language abstract is available as Supplemental Text 1.

Indigenous communities globally are challenged by threats to heritage resources due to residual effects of colonization, outsider encroachment on traditional spaces, and economic and political inequities. The effects of climate change add another dimension to these challenges, not only by altering familiar ecosystems and landscapes but also through the destruction of Indigenous heritage spaces. The University of Maine's Northeast archaeology program supports Indigenous resilience to climate change through community-engaged approaches to archaeological research. Recent shell heap research at the Holmes Point West site in Machiasport, Maine, exemplifies these efforts by blending archaeological science with service through Passamaquoddy language preservation and community engagement. This article discusses the University of Maine's partnership with the Passamaquoddy Nation and reflects on the nexus of Indigenous archaeology, heritage protection, and climate change resilience.

Participating in an archaeological field school is one of the only educational experiences that nearly all professional archaeologists have during their training. As a result, field schools are uniquely suited to provide experiential education in emerging skills that all archaeologists will need, such as information and data literacies at all stages of the contemporary research and publishing cycle. The “embedded” librarian program in the University of New Brunswick's Downeast Maine Coastal Archaeology Field School is an effective means to deploy that focused expertise to help students better understand the relationship between fieldwork, data, and dissemination. At the same time, being in the field provides librarians with the knowledge to respond more effectively to the complex data management and research needs of archaeologists. We encourage large research projects to consider librarians as specialist members of the research team.

In much of the Western world, collaborative research undertaken by settler archaeologists readily lends itself, at least in part, to a continuation of the colonial project. Yet, against this backdrop, Australia's First Nations’ peoples continue to work with researchers and to drive systemic change in research practice. Community-engaged archaeology, defined here as codeveloped studies of ancestral places (following Schaepe et al. 2017), is directed to improving relationships between Indigenous peoples and archaeologists. Even so, the practice of archaeology with and for nonsettler communities remains underdeveloped with regard to institutional priorities and funding agency bureaucracies. Here, we (Mirarr Traditional Owners, Mirarr employees, and settler archaeologist researchers) reflect on these issues as part of our ongoing research on the ochres and bim (rock art) of the well-known Madjedbebe rockshelter in the Alligator Rivers region, Northern Territory, Australia.

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.

As an escape from the day-to-day drudgery of our “real” world, video games allow us to leave reality and explore new fictional worlds. These worlds are more enjoyable when they are developed from various digital materials and presented as an official story, which is called “lore.” Lore invites the player to submerge into background stories of fictional worlds, including but not limited to those in video games. Video-game lore often provides historical narratives of these worlds, sometimes even drawing on archaeological themes in the creation of characters and places. The video game League of Legends (LoL), developed by Riot Games, has its own detailed lore, often revolving around individual characters. Riot has developed this lore not only through the video game itself but through accompanying media. Although the lore is separate from the game and not necessarily needed, the advantage is that it can orient individuals to the world and the background stories of the characters and players. Additionally, it allows people who are not interested in playing the game to interact with the fictional world, given that the stories are captivating on their own. Here, we briefly discuss Riot's interactive lore website and focus on the background of two places within the LoL fictional world: Ionia and Targon. We examine the presentation of these places through an archaeological framework. Then, we evaluate how archaeology is portrayed throughout the lore, focusing specifically on archaeological field notes and the methods that we are told are employed by one of the characters. In our analysis of the portrayal of Targon, the discussion centers on how archaeological perspectives are an integral framework for the LoL lore. Lore creates a sense of place (a connection between a person and a spatial setting) for the fan community, players, and even developers. Consequently, it is useful to focus on this idea of storytelling through lore, taking a critical view of its power and how it can impact various audiences.

The transnational networks of the illicit and illegal antiquities trade are hard to perceive. We suggest representing the trade as a knowledge graph with multiple kinds of relationships that can be transformed by a neural architecture into a “knowledge graph embedding model.” The result is that the vectorization of the knowledge represented in the graph can be queried for missing “knowledge” of the trade by virtue of the various entities’ proximity in the multidimensional embedding space. In this article, we build a knowledge graph about the antiquities trade using a semantic annotation tool, drawing on the series of articles in the Trafficking Culture Project's online encyclopedia. We then use the AmpliGraph package, a series of tools for supervised machine learning (Costabello et al. 2019) to turn the graph into a knowledge graph embedding model. We query the model to predict new hypotheses and to cluster actors in the trade. The model suggests connections between actors and institutions hitherto unsuspected and not otherwise present in the original knowledge graph. This approach could hold enormous potential for illuminating the hidden corners of the illicit antiquities trade. The same method could be applied to other kinds of archaeological knowledge.

In the province of Ontario, Canada, it is estimated that 80% of archaeological sites are Indigenous, yet there are very few Indigenous archaeologists involved in management and decision-making about Indigenous heritage. Systemic barriers, particularly around licensing and regulations for curatorial facilities, continue to prevent Indigenous people from directly managing and protecting their own cultural heritage. Recognizing that Indigenous communities in northeastern Ontario have had little exposure or opportunity to learn about archaeology, for several years we have been involved in educational programs to train Indigenous youth, staff in First Nations government offices, and others. We illustrate with two examples: the monitor training program undertaken in northeastern Ontario and a project to catalog artifacts from the legacy collection from the La Cloche site.