CARD has become the world’s leading data platform for archaeological radiocarbon dates, a data set of increasing importance in heritage management, history, and statistical explorations of human demography. It did not start out this way. Developed as a local resource at the Canadian Museum of History, CARD languished after the retirement of its principal researcher, Dr. Richard Morlan. In 2014 CARD was transferred to UBC’s Laboratory of Archaeology (LOA) and was re-launched with a revised interface and improved functionality in 2015. Within 6 months, CARD had expanded across the world and now houses over 75% of the on line 14C data.
Dr. Andrew Martindale will discuss how this transformation was unexpected and how it raises important and as yet unresolved issues about data security, researcher access, descent community participation, funding, and data management, processing capacity, and administration. As CARD transforms from small to big data, we are developing a decentralized administrative model that we hope will provide the greatest value for users, the most responsive relationships, and the most enduring legacy. As anthropologists we recognize that much of what we do is necessarily ad hoc and emergent from practice; as archaeologists we understand that only time will tell if our plans are successful.
Facilitator(s): Mark Christensen, Susan Atkey, Larissa Ringham, Milena Constanda