An IS for archaeological finds management as a platform for knowledge management. The ArcheoTRAC case
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/03055721011050659 |
| Published date | 18 May 2010 |
| Pages | 136-152 |
| Date | 18 May 2010 |
| Author | Alessio Maria Braccini,Tommaso Federici |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management |
An IS for archaeological finds
management as a platform for
knowledge management
The ArcheoTRAC case
Alessio Maria Braccini
CeRSI, LUISS Guido Carli University, Rome, Italy, and
Tommaso Federici
DiStATeQ, University of Tuscia, Viterbo, Italy
Abstract
Purpose – The aim of this study is to describe the context, the activity, and the outcome of a project,
which led to the creation of ArcheoTRAC, the first information system (IS) designed to run all the daily
activities in archaeological finds management, to share information among the different professionals
and to support in this way knowledge creation.
Design/methodology/approach – The study focuses on the ArcheoTRAC system and on the
project that contributed to its development. Since the authors of this paper have been involved in the
project (one of them since its very beginning), an action research paradigm has been used to derive
scientific knowledge out of the experience. Both organizational and technological aspects are
investigated under the respective theoretical knowledge management perspectives.
Findings – There were two effective choices in order to foster knowledge sharing in a context of a
scarcity of interactions among professionals involved. Grouping representatives of possible users in
the project contributed to create a mutual understanding of their interdependent and complementary
needs and activities. Moreover, some system features of the ArcheoTRAC system (views, fields and
thesauri customization, non-prescriptive workflows) were effective in letting each user adapt
him/herself to the new system.
Practical implications – The study sheds light on the characteristics of a system designed in order
to maximize the information exploitation and sharing and, at the same time, to minimize the
introduction impact, in a context denoted by manual processes, lack of habit of cooperation, and poor
IT literacy.
Originality/value – The study deals with an innovative IS that supports all activities performed by
every professional involved in archaeological finds management. The study describes the architecture
of this IS that has been designed to minimize impacts on professionals’ behaviour and maximize
knowledge sharing.
Keywords Archaeology,Knowledge management, Cultural studies,Heritage, Knowledge sharing,
Information systems
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Archaeological finds management encompasses all the activities performed on
archaeological finds, from excavation, to restoration, study, and conservation. Each
find is not just an object that comes from the past. It may rather be a valuable source of
data and information.
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0305-5728.htm
VINE
40,2
136
Received 27 October 2009
Revised 17 February 2010
Accepted 1 March 2010
VINE: The journal of information and
knowledge management systems
Vol. 40 No. 2, 2010
pp. 136-152
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0305-5728
DOI 10.1108/03055721011050659
Each find, after its discovery, starts a new life cycle composed of several stages: at
every stage, much information is produced. This information can contribute to increase
the stock of knowledge on the specific find, on finds related to it, and more genera lly,
on the specific period of the human history the find belongs to.
To fully exploit the informative potential embedded in archaeological finds,
knowledge management practices and, if possible, a supporting information system
(IS) could help. Anyhow, observations from reality suggest that organizational
routines in place in finds management in archaeology do not adopt optimized
knowledge management practices, nor is any IS specifically available to support them
(Watrall and Siarto, 2007).
In this descriptive case study we analyse the activity and the outcome of the project
named “giSAD – Recouvrement du Potentiel Informatif des Sites Arche
´ologiques
De
´monte
´s” (“Potential Information Retrieval of Archaeological Mobile Sites”), by
means of which the first IS supporting daily operations of all professionals working in
archaeological finds management, ArcheoTRAC (Archaeological Heritage Tracking,
Recovery, Assessment and Conservation), has been designed and developed.
The structure of the paper is as follows. Firstly, some insights on the organizational
landscape and on the work practices currently adopted in archaeological finds
management is provided, in order to depict some peculiar, not commonly known
contexts. Afterwards, the theoretical framework and the design of the research are
discussed, followed by the case study description. A discussion on the findings and
some conclusions will follow.
2. Information and knowledge management in archaeology
How to manage knowledge in the archaeological field is not a new issue: many scholars
have dealt with it over the last decades. However, they have mostly addressed the
problem of sharing among archaeologists the results of their studies and research,
which is a twofold issue: how to make documents and information available, and how
to match the interpretation of a find provided by a scholar (following a school of
thought) in a study. Gardin, one of the very first to discuss the knowledge management
subject in archaeology together with the possible support of information technology
(Gardin, 1971), suggested the use of the web and a special hypertext structure for
documents in order to solve the first concern (Roux and Gardin, 2004), and the use of a
type of logic inference to make interpretation more explicit (Gardin, 2003).
As already stated, such works deal with the management of knowledge resulting
from studies performed by archaeologists on finds, which were possibly discovered a
long time before, and had already received more changes of status. This paper, which
also discusses the role of information technology as a support for knowledg e
management in archaeology, handles a quite different point of observation. The system
discussed here, in fact, has the aim of collecting all the possible information regarding
an archaeological find, since the very beginning (its recovery) and from then onwards.
By doing so, it targets all the professionals involved in finds management, coming to
constitute a platform for knowledge sharing and creation. In order to deepen the
relevance of this system, the following paragraphs describe what happens to an
archaeological find following its discovery, and how pertinent data are managed in the
process.
An IS for
archaeological
finds
137
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