Sarah Whitcher Kansa
Biographic Data
| ID | 127888 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sarah Whitcher Kansa |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sarah Whitcher |
| FAMILY NAME | Kansa |
| SIGNATURE | KANSA S W |
| AFFILIATIONS | Alexandria Archive Institute |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7920-5321 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 312 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 33 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Open Context in a Changing Context
This paper describes the rationale and strategies behind Open Context, an online data publishing service for archaeology. Launched in 2006, Open Context has published nearly 2.4 million records from 200 projects and sub-projects, representing the work of more than 1,600 scholars working across the world. Open Context's current data dissemination and curation efforts reflect our attempts to navigate a landscape filled with diverse and evolving cha…
Excavations at Poggio Civitate (Murlo)
Excavation during the 2024 season revealed new evidence related to industrial activities at Poggio Civitate as well as traces of habitation and related activities located to the east of Piano del Tesoro
Animal Exploitation at Early Bronze Age Ashqelon, Afridar
Improving the Usability of Archaeological Data through Written Guidelines
Archaeologists frequently use written guidelines such as site manuals, recording forms, and digital prompts during excavations to create usable data within and across projects. Most written guidelines emphasize creating either standardized datasets or narrative summaries; however, previous research has demonstrated that the resulting datasets are often difficult to (re)use. Our study analyzed observations and interviews conducted with four archae…
Will It Ever Be Fair
A fundamental task of archaeology is to address challenging scientific questions related to the complexity of human societies. If we are to systematically understand the processes that affect human societies on multiple spatial and temporal scales, research leveraging existing archaeological data is essential. However, only a fraction of the data from archaeological projects are publicly findable or accessible, let alone interoperable or reusable…
Where the Wild Things Are
An integrated study of the zooarchaeological, iconographic, and artefactual data from the Etruscan site of Poggio Civitate (Murlo, Italy), inhabited from the eighth to the sixth century bc , reveals intra-site differences in the distribution and disposal of animal body parts and species represented, including wild animals. Smaller mammals and birds that would be trapped are encountered more frequently in the site's workshop area and larger prey (…
Digital Data and Data Literacy in Archaeology Now and in the New Decade
OVERVIEW Digital data play an increasingly important role in how we understand the present and the past. The challenges inherent in understanding and using digital data are as intellectually demanding as any other archaeological research endeavor. For these reasons, data management cannot be regarded as a simple compliance or technical issue. For data to be meaningfully preserved and used in intellectually rigorous ways, they need to be integrate…
Digital archaeology and 'D' transforms
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Standardization, Storage, and Dissemination of Environmental Archaeological Data
A Square Peg in a Round Hole
This essay offers a first-hand look at how one archaeological project (the Athienou Archaeological Project on Cyprus) decided to rethink the definition of “final” and contribute to the growing discourse surrounding 3D visualization, archaeological publication, archival data, and access
Archaeological Analysis in the Information Age
With the advent of the Web, increased emphasis on “research data management,” and innovations in reproducible research practices, scholars have more incentives and opportunities to document and disseminate their primary data. This article seeks to guide archaeologists in data sharing by highlighting recurring challenges in reusing archived data gleaned from observations on workflows and reanalysis efforts involving datasets published over the pas…
Archaeology and Archaeological Information in the Digital Society
Archaeology and Archaeological Information in the Digital Society, edited by Isto Huvila, brings together a range of studies by archaeologists and information scientists to examine the implications of digital technologies on archaeological interpretation and how we engage with the past. Digital data collection and the embedding of digital media in interpretation and presentation means that archaeologists are all engaging in some way in “digital s…
Standardization, Storage, and Dissemination of Environmental Archaeological Data
Beyond the Archive
This article presents research on archaeological data creation and management practices at two excavations in Europe in order to gain a better understanding of how to align these practices with the data reuse needs of a broader research community. The Secret Life of Data project follows the life cycle of data from the field to the digital repository to better understand opportunities and challenges in data interpretation, publication, and preserv…
Data Beyond the Archive in Digital Archaeology
This special section stems from discussions that took place in a forum at the Society for American Archaeology's annual conference in 2017. The forum, Beyond Data Management: A Conversation about “Digital Data Realities”, addressed challenges in fostering greater reuse of the digital archaeological data now curated in repositories. Forum discussants considered digital archaeology beyond the status quo of “data management” to better situate the sh…
Zooarchaeology in the era of big data
The Digital Index of North American Archaeology
Sea-level rise and archaeological site destruction
The impact of changing climate on terrestrial and underwater archaeological sites, historic buildings, and cultural landscapes can be examined through quantitatively-based analyses encompassing large data samples and broad geographic and temporal scales. The Digital Index of North American Archaeology (DINAA) is a multi-institutional collaboration that allows researchers online access to linked heritage data from multiple sources and data sets. T…
Reflections on a Road Less Traveled
Reflections on a Road Less Traveled: Alt-Ac Archaeology Sarah Whitcher Kansa and Eric Kansa FINAL DRAFT, September 2015 To be published in the Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies, Fall 2015 issue on the theme “Alternative Academic Careers and 21 st Century Scholarship” In 2003, with recent Ph.D.s in Near Eastern archaeology and anthropology in hand, we did something risky. We decided to step off the traditional acade…
Using Linked Open Data to Improve Data Reuse in Zooarchaeology
The inability of journals and books to accommodate data and to make it reusable has led to the gradual loss of vast amounts of information. The practice of disseminating selected sub-sets of data (usually in summary tables) permits only very limited types of reuse, and thus hampers scholarship. In recent years, largely in response to increasing government and institutional requirements for full data access, the scholarly community is giving data …
Snapshots of Digital Scholarship in Zooarchaeology
Special Issue on Digital Zooarchaeologysharing landscape include approaches to data access, aggregation, and preservation (e.g., DINAA 1 , tDAR 2 , ADS 3 , CARD 4 , SPARC 5 ); and refinements in the application of digital methods (geometric morphometrics, 3D modeling, GIS).Many parallel initiatives undoubtedly exist in ethnobiology often on more localized community focused scales.This special issue features the work of a diverse group of research…
Data Sharing Reveals Complexity in the Westward Spread of Domestic Animals across Neolithic Turkey
This study presents the results of a major data integration project bringing together primary archaeozoological data for over 200,000 faunal specimens excavated from seventeen sites in Turkey spanning the Epipaleolithic through Chalcolithic periods, c. 18,000-4,000 cal BC, in order to document the initial westward spread of domestic livestock across Neolithic central and western Turkey. From these shared datasets we demonstrate that the westward …
Data Publishing and Archaeology's Information Ecosystem
Archaeologists increasingly employ various digital tools in the documentation of fieldwork and post-excavation analysis. In doing so, they create vast amounts of data. Archaeologists need to create such rich bodies of digital data because archaeology is often destructive; that is, an excavated area can never be excavated in exactly the same way again. However, professional norms that only reward conventional article and book publication endanger …
Open Archaeology
Archaeologists create vast amounts of data, but very little sees formal dissemination. This failure points to several dysfunctions in the current structures of archaeological communication. The discipline urgently requires better data professionalism. Current technologies can help ameliorate this, but scholars generally lack the time and technological know-how to disseminate data. We put forth a model of “data sharing as publishing” as a means to…
Digital Heritage and Archaeology in Practice
Distinguishing between archaeological sheep and goat bones using a single collagen peptide
Collagen fingerprinting of archaeological bone and teeth remains from Domuztepe, South Eastern Turkey
Other People’s Data
Resource Exploitation at Late Neolithic Domuztepe
Domuztepe, in southeastern Turkey, is one of the largest known Late Neolithic sites in the Near East. Ecofactual remains recovered at Domuztepe indicate that the site's inhabitants relied on a well-established mixed economy of domestic plants and animals to sustain the settlement's large population, which may have peaked at more than 1,500 people. Evidence of a long and continuous occupation of this site attests to a successful agropastoral econo…
Zooarchaeology in the era of big data
Open Archaeology
Archaeologists create vast amounts of data, but very little sees formal dissemination. This failure points to several dysfunctions in the current structures of archaeological communication. The discipline urgently requires better data professionalism. Current technologies can help ameliorate this, but scholars generally lack the time and technological know-how to disseminate data. We put forth a model of “data sharing as publishing” as a means to…
Whose Bones are those? Preliminary Comparative Analysis of Fragmented Human and Animal Bones in the "Death Pit" at Domuztepe, a Late Neolithic Settlement in Southeastern Turkey
Kansa S.W., Gauld S.C., Campbell S. & Carter E. 2009. — Whose Bones are those? Preliminary Comparative Analysis of Fragmented Human and Animal Bones in the "Death Pit" at Domuztepe, a Late Neolithic Settlement in Southeastern Turkey. Anthropozoologica 44(1): 159-172.A unique feature at the mid-6th millennium BCE settlement at Domuztepe, Turkey, is a large pit filled predominantly with fragmented human and animal bones. Previous studies have estab…
Beyond the Archive
This article presents research on archaeological data creation and management practices at two excavations in Europe in order to gain a better understanding of how to align these practices with the data reuse needs of a broader research community. The Secret Life of Data project follows the life cycle of data from the field to the digital repository to better understand opportunities and challenges in data interpretation, publication, and preserv…
Will It Ever Be Fair
A fundamental task of archaeology is to address challenging scientific questions related to the complexity of human societies. If we are to systematically understand the processes that affect human societies on multiple spatial and temporal scales, research leveraging existing archaeological data is essential. However, only a fraction of the data from archaeological projects are publicly findable or accessible, let alone interoperable or reusable…
Data Beyond the Archive in Digital Archaeology
This special section stems from discussions that took place in a forum at the Society for American Archaeology's annual conference in 2017. The forum, Beyond Data Management: A Conversation about “Digital Data Realities”, addressed challenges in fostering greater reuse of the digital archaeological data now curated in repositories. Forum discussants considered digital archaeology beyond the status quo of “data management” to better situate the sh…
Using Linked Open Data to Improve Data Reuse in Zooarchaeology
The inability of journals and books to accommodate data and to make it reusable has led to the gradual loss of vast amounts of information. The practice of disseminating selected sub-sets of data (usually in summary tables) permits only very limited types of reuse, and thus hampers scholarship. In recent years, largely in response to increasing government and institutional requirements for full data access, the scholarly community is giving data …
Digital Data and Data Literacy in Archaeology Now and in the New Decade
OVERVIEW Digital data play an increasingly important role in how we understand the present and the past. The challenges inherent in understanding and using digital data are as intellectually demanding as any other archaeological research endeavor. For these reasons, data management cannot be regarded as a simple compliance or technical issue. For data to be meaningfully preserved and used in intellectually rigorous ways, they need to be integrate…
Archaeological Analysis in the Information Age
With the advent of the Web, increased emphasis on “research data management,” and innovations in reproducible research practices, scholars have more incentives and opportunities to document and disseminate their primary data. This article seeks to guide archaeologists in data sharing by highlighting recurring challenges in reusing archived data gleaned from observations on workflows and reanalysis efforts involving datasets published over the pas…
Googling the Grey
Primary data, though an essential resource for supporting authoritative archaeological narratives, rarely enters the public record. Lack of primary data publication is also a major obstacle to cultural heritage preservation and the goals of cultural resource management (CRM). Moreover, access to primary data is key to contesting claims about the past and to the formulation of credible alternative interpretations. In response to these concerns, ex…
"An Open Context for "Near Eastern Archaeology
The common use by archaeologists of ubiquitous technologies such as computers and digital cameras means that archaeological research projects now produce huge amounts of diverse, digital documentation. However, while the technology is available to collect this documentation, we still largely lack community-accepted dissemination channels appropriate for such torrents of data. Open Context aims to help fill this gap by providing open access data p…
A Square Peg in a Round Hole
This essay offers a first-hand look at how one archaeological project (the Athienou Archaeological Project on Cyprus) decided to rethink the definition of “final” and contribute to the growing discourse surrounding 3D visualization, archaeological publication, archival data, and access
The Digital Index of North American Archaeology
Snapshots of Digital Scholarship in Zooarchaeology
Special Issue on Digital Zooarchaeologysharing landscape include approaches to data access, aggregation, and preservation (e.g., DINAA 1 , tDAR 2 , ADS 3 , CARD 4 , SPARC 5 ); and refinements in the application of digital methods (geometric morphometrics, 3D modeling, GIS).Many parallel initiatives undoubtedly exist in ethnobiology often on more localized community focused scales.This special issue features the work of a diverse group of research…
Data Publishing and Archaeology's Information Ecosystem
Archaeologists increasingly employ various digital tools in the documentation of fieldwork and post-excavation analysis. In doing so, they create vast amounts of data. Archaeologists need to create such rich bodies of digital data because archaeology is often destructive; that is, an excavated area can never be excavated in exactly the same way again. However, professional norms that only reward conventional article and book publication endanger …
Digital archaeology and 'D' transforms
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Archaeology and Archaeological Information in the Digital Society
Archaeology and Archaeological Information in the Digital Society, edited by Isto Huvila, brings together a range of studies by archaeologists and information scientists to examine the implications of digital technologies on archaeological interpretation and how we engage with the past. Digital data collection and the embedding of digital media in interpretation and presentation means that archaeologists are all engaging in some way in “digital s…
Reflections on a Road Less Traveled
Reflections on a Road Less Traveled: Alt-Ac Archaeology Sarah Whitcher Kansa and Eric Kansa FINAL DRAFT, September 2015 To be published in the Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies, Fall 2015 issue on the theme “Alternative Academic Careers and 21 st Century Scholarship” In 2003, with recent Ph.D.s in Near Eastern archaeology and anthropology in hand, we did something risky. We decided to step off the traditional acade…
"An Open Context for "Near Eastern Archaeology
The common use by archaeologists of ubiquitous technologies such as computers and digital cameras means that archaeological research projects now produce huge amounts of diverse, digital documentation. However, while the technology is available to collect this documentation, we still largely lack community-accepted dissemination channels appropriate for such torrents of data. Open Context aims to help fill this gap by providing open access data p…
Distinguishing between archaeological sheep and goat bones using a single collagen peptide
Whose Bones are those? Preliminary Comparative Analysis of Fragmented Human and Animal Bones in the "Death Pit" at Domuztepe, a Late Neolithic Settlement in Southeastern Turkey
Kansa S.W., Gauld S.C., Campbell S. & Carter E. 2009. — Whose Bones are those? Preliminary Comparative Analysis of Fragmented Human and Animal Bones in the "Death Pit" at Domuztepe, a Late Neolithic Settlement in Southeastern Turkey. Anthropozoologica 44(1): 159-172.A unique feature at the mid-6th millennium BCE settlement at Domuztepe, Turkey, is a large pit filled predominantly with fragmented human and animal bones. Previous studies have estab…
Resource Exploitation at Late Neolithic Domuztepe
Domuztepe, in southeastern Turkey, is one of the largest known Late Neolithic sites in the Near East. Ecofactual remains recovered at Domuztepe indicate that the site's inhabitants relied on a well-established mixed economy of domestic plants and animals to sustain the settlement's large population, which may have peaked at more than 1,500 people. Evidence of a long and continuous occupation of this site attests to a successful agropastoral econo…
Googling the Grey
Primary data, though an essential resource for supporting authoritative archaeological narratives, rarely enters the public record. Lack of primary data publication is also a major obstacle to cultural heritage preservation and the goals of cultural resource management (CRM). Moreover, access to primary data is key to contesting claims about the past and to the formulation of credible alternative interpretations. In response to these concerns, ex…
Archaeology 2.0
Collagen fingerprinting of archaeological bone and teeth remains from Domuztepe, South Eastern Turkey
Other People’s Data
Open Archaeology
Archaeologists create vast amounts of data, but very little sees formal dissemination. This failure points to several dysfunctions in the current structures of archaeological communication. The discipline urgently requires better data professionalism. Current technologies can help ameliorate this, but scholars generally lack the time and technological know-how to disseminate data. We put forth a model of “data sharing as publishing” as a means to…
Additional Thoughts on Sustaining and Promoting Open Data in Archaeology
We are grateful to the respondents for their thoughtful contributions to this forum. Many of their comments focus on the issue of the profitability of open access/open data models for publication (see Pratt, Alexander, and Hall). Our own livelihood depends on sustainability, so we are naturally concerned about this issue. In our work with Open Context, we have benefited from public and private granting agencies for funding, libraries for data man…
Data Sharing Reveals Complexity in the Westward Spread of Domestic Animals across Neolithic Turkey
This study presents the results of a major data integration project bringing together primary archaeozoological data for over 200,000 faunal specimens excavated from seventeen sites in Turkey spanning the Epipaleolithic through Chalcolithic periods, c. 18,000-4,000 cal BC, in order to document the initial westward spread of domestic livestock across Neolithic central and western Turkey. From these shared datasets we demonstrate that the westward …
Data Publishing and Archaeology's Information Ecosystem
Archaeologists increasingly employ various digital tools in the documentation of fieldwork and post-excavation analysis. In doing so, they create vast amounts of data. Archaeologists need to create such rich bodies of digital data because archaeology is often destructive; that is, an excavated area can never be excavated in exactly the same way again. However, professional norms that only reward conventional article and book publication endanger …
Reflections on a Road Less Traveled
Reflections on a Road Less Traveled: Alt-Ac Archaeology Sarah Whitcher Kansa and Eric Kansa FINAL DRAFT, September 2015 To be published in the Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies, Fall 2015 issue on the theme “Alternative Academic Careers and 21 st Century Scholarship” In 2003, with recent Ph.D.s in Near Eastern archaeology and anthropology in hand, we did something risky. We decided to step off the traditional acade…
Using Linked Open Data to Improve Data Reuse in Zooarchaeology
The inability of journals and books to accommodate data and to make it reusable has led to the gradual loss of vast amounts of information. The practice of disseminating selected sub-sets of data (usually in summary tables) permits only very limited types of reuse, and thus hampers scholarship. In recent years, largely in response to increasing government and institutional requirements for full data access, the scholarly community is giving data …
Snapshots of Digital Scholarship in Zooarchaeology
Special Issue on Digital Zooarchaeologysharing landscape include approaches to data access, aggregation, and preservation (e.g., DINAA 1 , tDAR 2 , ADS 3 , CARD 4 , SPARC 5 ); and refinements in the application of digital methods (geometric morphometrics, 3D modeling, GIS).Many parallel initiatives undoubtedly exist in ethnobiology often on more localized community focused scales.This special issue features the work of a diverse group of research…
Sea-level rise and archaeological site destruction
The impact of changing climate on terrestrial and underwater archaeological sites, historic buildings, and cultural landscapes can be examined through quantitatively-based analyses encompassing large data samples and broad geographic and temporal scales. The Digital Index of North American Archaeology (DINAA) is a multi-institutional collaboration that allows researchers online access to linked heritage data from multiple sources and data sets. T…
Standardization, Storage, and Dissemination of Environmental Archaeological Data
Beyond the Archive
This article presents research on archaeological data creation and management practices at two excavations in Europe in order to gain a better understanding of how to align these practices with the data reuse needs of a broader research community. The Secret Life of Data project follows the life cycle of data from the field to the digital repository to better understand opportunities and challenges in data interpretation, publication, and preserv…
Data Beyond the Archive in Digital Archaeology
This special section stems from discussions that took place in a forum at the Society for American Archaeology's annual conference in 2017. The forum, Beyond Data Management: A Conversation about “Digital Data Realities”, addressed challenges in fostering greater reuse of the digital archaeological data now curated in repositories. Forum discussants considered digital archaeology beyond the status quo of “data management” to better situate the sh…
Zooarchaeology in the era of big data
The Digital Index of North American Archaeology
Archaeological Analysis in the Information Age
With the advent of the Web, increased emphasis on “research data management,” and innovations in reproducible research practices, scholars have more incentives and opportunities to document and disseminate their primary data. This article seeks to guide archaeologists in data sharing by highlighting recurring challenges in reusing archived data gleaned from observations on workflows and reanalysis efforts involving datasets published over the pas…
Archaeology and Archaeological Information in the Digital Society
Archaeology and Archaeological Information in the Digital Society, edited by Isto Huvila, brings together a range of studies by archaeologists and information scientists to examine the implications of digital technologies on archaeological interpretation and how we engage with the past. Digital data collection and the embedding of digital media in interpretation and presentation means that archaeologists are all engaging in some way in “digital s…
Standardization, Storage, and Dissemination of Environmental Archaeological Data
A Square Peg in a Round Hole
This essay offers a first-hand look at how one archaeological project (the Athienou Archaeological Project on Cyprus) decided to rethink the definition of “final” and contribute to the growing discourse surrounding 3D visualization, archaeological publication, archival data, and access
Archaeology (25 works) · Computer Science (18 works) · History (17 works) · Image Processing and 3D Reconstruction (17 works) · Geography (14 works) · Archaeological Research and Protection (13 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (13 works) · Political science (12 works) · Research Data Management Practices (11 works) · Data science (10 works)