Archaeology Data Service
ADS logo
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| Abbreviation | ADS |
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| Formation | 1996 |
| Legal status | Higher Education body |
| Purpose | Digital Repository for UK HE Archaeology |
| Location |
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Region served
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UK |
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Director
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Professor Julian Richards |
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Main organ
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ADS Management Committee |
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Parent organization
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University of York |
| Affiliations | AHRC, HEIRNET, FISH, A&H Data Centres (NoC) |
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Staff
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11 |
| Website | http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk |
The Archaeology Data Service (ADS) is an open access digital archive for archaeological research outputs. It is located in The King's Manor, at the University of York. Originally intended to curate digital outputs from archaeological researchers based in the UK's Higher Education sector, the ADS also holds archive material created under the auspices of national and local government as well as in the commercial archaeology sector. The ADS carries out research, most of which focuses on resource discovery, cross-searching and interoperability with other relevant archives in the UK, Europe and the United States of America.
The Archaeology Data Service is listed in the Registry of Research Data Repositories re3data.org.
In the late 1990s a consensus developed in the field of archaeology that archaeological data in digital form was highly fragile due to both an inadequate understanding of technical threats to its sustainability and the lack of an infrastructure to preserve it in the long term. In April 1996 a consortium comprising eight Departments of Archaeology from UK Universities joined forces with the Council for British Archaeology (CBA) to put a proposal to the Arts and Humanities Data Service Executive to establish an Archaeology Data Service. This service was to host a digital archive for archaeologists and to provide advice and guidance to the archaeological community on how to create and manage their digital datasets. As a result, the ADS was established at the University of York Department of Archaeology in September 1996 with two full-time members of staff and under the directorship of Professor Julian Richards. From 1996 until 2008 the ADS hosted AHDS Archaeology, a subject centre devoted to archaeology funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council via the AHDS. The AHDS closed in March 2008 as a result of a controversial decision by the AHRC to withdraw funding. The ADS now receives funding directly from AHRC, rather than through the AHDS, it is also funded by other Higher Education and cultural heritage sector organisations including the European Union.
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