Virtual Desktops: A Practical Solution for Data Collaboration in Archaeology

Abstract

Archaeological teams intensively collect data together in the field for only a small portion of the year, but collaborative work on the data necessarily continues throughout the longer off-season. Typically, dozens of team members scattered across a country or the globe require access to the same digital dataset, including a survey or excavation relational database, photographs, geospatial data, and 3-D models. Each team member needs a way to both analyze existing data and update those data for immediate use by the team. Virtual Desktops (VDs) are a practical, user-friendly technological solution for dealing with data management and collaboration on archaeological projects: they do not require major changes to the way most projects work with and manage their data, and they provide multiple benefits that address the dispersed data problem. This facilitates a team’s preparation of its dataset for online open-access publication as part of archaeology’s emerging open science paradigm. At the Penn Museum, we have begun using VDs in archaeological research and teaching, as introduced later in this article.​