The English Heritage Funded OASIS project, developed and hosted by the ADS, has shown that all sectors of the archaeological community can collaborate in taking advantage of data standards. OASIS provides an on-line form for field archaeologists to submit summary reports of their work to the relevant local authority archaeologist and national monument record as well as uploading ‘grey literature’ to the new on-line Grey Literature Library. This reporting mechanism is now a requirement for archaeological work in a development control context throughout the majority of England . Inspired by the success of this system in England , Historic Scotland and the RCAHMS have recently funded a roll-out of this system in Scotland . The welcome advent of OASIS got the RCAHMS and local authority archaeologists in Scotland to thinking…..if a coherent and standards compliant reporting system is possible for archaeological interventions (or ‘events’) why not for archaeological sites as well?

For a very long time it has been recognised that the unstructured way that new archaeological data, on sites, monuments and archaeological interventions has been creating problems in terms of duplication, lack of synchronisation (especially between national and local records) and a huge back-log of material that should be, but is not yet, available via online systems such as Pastmap or the various on-line Sites and Monuments Records. In close cooperation with the RCAHMS and with the help of Historic Scotland and the Scottish based archaeological contracting units it was decided to see if a protocol could be developed that would streamline this reporting process delivering benefit to all users of archaeological data.

The result is ASPIRE – The Archaeological Standard Protocol for the Integrated Reporting of Events. The ASPIRE protocol specifies the use of OASIS as an event reporting mechanism, but goes further, it gives a very clear structure for how information on new sites (and new information on known sites) should be reported to the data curators. This reporting does not take place online, but via template databases, these are very simple and contain the minimum reporting requirements for this information, the big benefit is that this data can be integrated directly into the databases of the SMR and the RCAHMS database meaning no time is wasted ‘re-casting’ data or chasing missing bits, or even retyping information. ASPIRE even gives a template for those archaeologists who are using Geographical Information Systems, so that their site boundaries, survey extents etc can again be integrated with those of others and made available to all archaeologists through WebGIS systems such as that used by Pastmap. Of course, it is important to remember that the ASPIRE protocol is not intended to tell people what to do in the field, only how it should be reported, similarly it is not meant as replacement for the appropriate level of archaeological publication (including Discovery and Excavation Scotland). The use of the ASPIRE protocol is intended to become an enforceable condition for developer funded work and for HS granted work after an appropriate bedding in period. Once its use is widespread, as good practice, all sectors of the archaeological community will reap the benefit of faster, more up to date and more easy to use archaeological data.

Visit the ASPIRE website at http://www.aspire-resource.info/ (no longer available)

Article by Dr Stuart Jeffrey, October 2006