The Virtual Repository of Arctic Archaeology and the Democratization of Science

The promise of the information age is the ability to transcend geography for archaeological analysis through online resources. The problem of the modern socially and politically correct world is that collections are being redistributed to the far corners of the planet and are often inaccessible to many researchers. The result is a nascent inability to create regional or global prehistories because scholars no longer have access to the material remains of the past. The Democratization of Science project seeks to remedy this problem by creating online virtual 2D and 3D repositories with onscreen analytical tools. The end result is the creation of virtual repositories of things (artifacts) when those things are in actuality widely distributed around the globe. To test this model, we created the first phase of the Virtual Repository of Arctic Archaeology, and have now 3D scanned nearly 4,000 artifacts and photographed over 12,000 artifacts from 105 archaeological sites on the Alaska Peninsula. These are presented in a flexible and adaptable database structure that allows multiple levels of analysis.