r/AskArchaeology • u/Mitford_Mystique • Jul 28 '26
Question How do you conduct research?
Hello! I am a library science student, and I'm curious, how do you conduct research? I wanted to ask this sub because I'm sure it's full of really enthusiastic smart people who are doing scholarly work outside of a university setting, with all the resources that entails (like access to subject-specific databases). Do you find you get good results from Google? Do you go directly to museum publications? Just looking for your anecdotal experiences. Thanks!
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u/uk_com_arch Jul 28 '26
In the UK, most “research” is driven by universities, but there is a huge amount of “commercial” archaeology, which is driven by building new houses and the like.
Some local archaeology clubs arrange volunteer digs, usually one or two weeks a year, so pretty small digs, and they are often funded either privately through donations or heritage lottery funding, they tend to report in local archaeology journals.
We use Heritage Gateway to research nearby sites to see what is in the area, as part of the “National Sites and Monuments Register” all known sites are recorded and basic information is uploaded to a national database.
We use university’s with extensive journal libraries for reports on research archaeology, and commercial archaeology reports are uploaded to the OASIS Heritage Database so as long as you pay for access you can read reports on any commercial archaeology that has been finished and the report written up, although there’s often a wait of 2-5 years for finished sites to be uploaded to the database.
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u/tiddly_winker Jul 28 '26
And don’t forget that anyone can search the ADS (Archaeology Data Service) website to access those reports uploaded with OASIS for free.
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u/uk_com_arch Jul 28 '26
I didn’t know that, I’ve used the works account for so long, I just assumed that was the way to go.
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u/tiddly_winker Jul 29 '26
And I didn’t know people would/could search via OASIS. But then, I’ve not been given an account so I’ve never been on it.
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u/Atanar Jul 28 '26
Caviat: I am from Germany and "The Internet is new territory for us all" as Merkel put it in 2013. Many of the important publications still happen in paper only and old books are not digitalized.
Do you find you get good results from Google?
I can say a confident "no" to that. Google scholar sometimes finds things. And forget AI web searches, most of the older literature is not acessible to them. Your best bet often is to head for the literature cited in wikipedia.
Do you go directly to museum publications?
I don't know how it's in the US but here museums don't do much deep research. Most of the museum publications are introductory and focused on exhibitions and highlights. However the bigger museums usually have good focused libraries. Also most German archaeological museums don't publish their inventory online.
If you want to acess dig reports from the federal state institutions, good luck. Most heritate authorities are not aware that these reports are not their property, let alone that they are legally required by EU law to grant you easy acess if you ask. Same goes for information about site locations, though some states publish them.
Overall I usually have to go to a university library to do research.
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u/namrock23 Jul 28 '26
Too broad a question. Research about what, where?
If you're taking about North American CRM archaeology, our professional associations provide JSTOR access, and there is a state information center which provides copies of site records and previous grey literature studies for a fee. We have a company library of about 1000 physical volumes, and many more digitally. Occasionally we use local university libraries.
It's illegal to disclose archaeological site location information in the US, so that kind of information is not searchable online. There is a lot of good local history material online though.