The Virtual Repository of Arctic Archaeology and the Democratization of Science Herbert Maschner 1,2 , Buck Benson 2 , Nicholas Clement 2 , Nicholas A. Holmer 2 , Jonathan Holmes 2,3 , Corey Schou 3 1 Center for Virtualization and Applied Spatial Technologies (CVAST), University of South Florida, 4202 East Fowler Ave. CMC102, Tampa, Florida 33620-5550, USA 2 Idaho Virtualization Laboratory (IVL), Idaho Museum of Natural History, Idaho State University, 921 S. 8th Ave., Stop 8096, Pocatello, Idaho 83204, USA 3 Informatics Research Institute (IRI), College of Business, Idaho State University, 921 S. 8th Ave., Stop 8020, Pocatello, Idaho 83204, USA Abstract— 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. Keywords—3D scanning, virtualization, archaeological analysis, on-line repositories, Arctic I. INTRODUCTION Archaeology, at its most basic level, is the study of things. It is the concept that Christopher Chippindale, when editor of Antiquity, once called thinginess. In a more theoretical milieu, it is what Tim Taylor subsumes under materiality [1] and what Lee Lyman and Michael J. O’Brien argued as the fundamental character of archaeological analysis, a concept they later morphed into phylogenetic trees of these same things [2, 3]. In the history of archaeology, these things were the foundation of every chronology, every regional and global prehistory, and every comparative analysis. When V. Gordon Childe wrote The Danube in Prehistory [4] or Alfred V. Kidder presented an Introduction to Southwestern Archaeology [5], these were books about things – stone and bone tools, ceramics, sculpture, beads, worked shell – the things of prehistory. All prehistories are based on the comparative assessment of things. But the study of things has become more difficult in archaeology. The globalization of archaeology has not resulted in a centralization of data but rather the converse. Empowering countries that were former colonies, sanctioning ethic minorities, transferring ownership of collections to indigenous peoples, and the general repatriation of heritage has dispersed collections to the far corners of the planet. While absolutely correct in concept, it has made it remarkably difficult to write prehistories because one simply does not have access to the required things of the past This problem is especially acute in the north, where multiple levels of ownership, distance and remoteness are the controlling factors in comparative analysis. At this stage, other than a cursory overview, it is, for example, impossible to write an arctic prehistory because the possibility of visiting the key collections in Copenhagen, the villages of west Greenland, the villages of Nunavut, museum repositories in Yellowknife, Fairbanks, Barrow, Bethel, St. Johns, Calgary, Unalaska, Kodiak, many small Alaska villages, as well as Ottawa, Seattle, Whitehorse, Reykjavik, St. Petersburg, Anchorage, Magadan, Yakutsk, Petropavlovsk and dozens of other small community, village, and indigenous repositories – is prohibitive in both time and funding, even if one could arrange it logistically. This global problem became acute several years ago, but in the context of zooarchaeology. The laboratory analysis of the Sanak Island Biocomplexity Project (Aleutian Islands, Alaska)[6] resulted in the collection of over 500,000 faunal elements. There was not a single osteological repository with a sufficient comparative collection to complete the analysis, no museum would loan us even a portion of the collection needed, and no museum encouraged us to bring over 300 boxes of material to analyze. The result was the National Science Foundation funded Virtual Zooarchaeology of the Arctic Project (VZAP), http://vzap.iri.isu.edu/: a collaboration between the Idaho Virtualization Laboratory at Idaho State University (ISU), the Informatics Research Institute at ISU, and the Canadian Museum of Civilization. This project created 978-1-5090-0048-7/15/$31.00 ©2015 IEEE