Cite this as: Kansa, E. and Kansa, S. Whitcher 2026 Open Context in a Changing Context: Data Publishing, Interoperability and Governance, Internet Archaeology 71. https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.71.3
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 challenges. Responses to professional, institutional, and sustainability issues, some of a global character and some of a United States specific character, have helped shape Open Context's technological and semantic choices. Though focused on United States specific experiences, we hope that this in-depth discussion of how Open Context responded to these multifaceted concerns will help advance international community wide conversations about information architectures, governance, and social factors in archaeological informatics.
Corresponding author: Eric Kansa
[email protected]
Open Context
Sarah Whitcher Kansa
[email protected]
Open Context
Figure 1: Diagram of Open Context ETL and Standards Annotation Publishing Workflows
Figure 2: Related Artifact and Stratigraphic Unit Records
Figure 3a: Example Search Result Visualization at a Large Regional Scale (Map)
Figure 3b: Example Search Result Visualization at a Large Regional Scale (Chronology)
Figure 4: Open Context Query Results Mapping Intra-Site Distributions of Textile Implements
Figure 5: DINAA Records with Links to Resources in tDAR, JSTOR, the Federal Register, etc.
Figure 6: Different Standards and Levels of Interoperability
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