My educated guess is that the total number of artifacts collected over the 175 years or so people have been conducting archaeological expeditions is in the hundreds of millions. Artifacts recovered from excavations or surveys are located in museums, universities, private collections, laboratories, garages and antique shops all over the world. There are catalogs at the state and provincial level in some countries, or for specific museums, but even they only hold a percentage of the artifacts recovered over the years from that particular state or province. And artifacts are only a fraction of the information collected from an archaeological assemblage. A catalog of all that would truly be monstrous in scope.
Specialist Archaeologists
So, if no one can look at all the artifacts from all over the world, or find a resource that covers all that information, how do archaeologists know what they know? They specialize: They pick a particular region or cultural group in the world, and they work very hard to gain a deep understanding of that area. An archaeologist specializing in say, Sumer, reads the books and articles published on Sumerian archaeology, visits the Sumerian collections in museums, learns the written form of the language, attends conferences on Sumer, discusses Sumer with colleagues, and digs Sumerian sites. She might attend the large pan-discipline archaeology meetings, but chances are she'll spend much of the time listening to papers on Sumerian archaeology and discussing Sumerian issues with her colleagues. If she wanted to change specialties, she would have to do the same level of background research to understand what is known about the new culture before she begins to excavate. All archaeologists must specialize to one degree or another.
Online Catalogs
Since the computer has become such an integral part of all our lives, there have been attempts to create online catalogs of archaeological data. The problem is not simple, however. A database that just listed the collected artifacts from a site would not be terribly useful, even if it included high-quality scanned three-dimensional holographic images of each artifact. You'd need to know what context the artifact came from (in a burial? in the midden? under a house?). If it was in a burial, you'd need to know what kind of burial it was, who and how many people were buried, how they died, what other artifacts were found with it, what the date was on the bones, and what the date was on the artifacts. Were there tests completed on the artifacts, what were the results? Can additional testing be arranged?
Archaeology Database Initiatives
Nevertheless, initiatives such as the Archaeology Data Service are at the forefront of database construction for keeping records of archaeological excavations and even analytical purposes. With these databases, you can run queries to find, say, a list of sites that have produced a specific Roman coin, for example. However, with the depth and complexity of data now available, databases are becoming essential just to keep up-to-date on your speciality. An excellent database discussion is the CSA/ADAP Archaeology Database Discussion.
Do you have a question about archaeology?
Send an email to Kris Hirst today!
