Historical archaeological collections in Argentina: open science, digital conservation and public access repositories

Abstract

Globalization, Internet and the expansion of Information and Communication Technologies substantially modified the links between science and society and significantly impacted on scientific practices. Both divulgation and scientific production are crossed by the need to develop virtual ways of communication within the framework of the growing open science policies that, on the one hand, regulate the duty of making research results available to society and, on the other, promote their dissemination in digital form. In this context, we explained the work carried out on the Arroyo Nievas 2 archaeological collection towards its divulgation and open access. Arroyo Nievas 2 is an archaeological site located in an 19th century interethnic frontier, where a set of objects associated to the indigenous population and materials of European origin, relatively new for Argentinian archaeology, were recovered. Among other activities, databases were expanded and standardized, a definitive inventory and complete catalogue of the objects were elaborated, as well as the graphic documentation and analytical manuscript sheets were digitalized. Those digital objects were shared in the free access archaeological repository Suquía (Universidad Nacional de Córdoba and CONICET). Through this work, novel specific parameters to standardize the data were settled, up to now absent in archaeological discipline, and relevant to other professionals dealing with these collections. The discussion of procedures, difficulties and results obtained in this work contributes to improve the practices of both data processing and curation, so as the administration of scientific collections.

Keywords
Arroyo Nievas; Digitization; Buenos Aires frontier; Archeological heritage; 19th century