Excavation data lost to a 'digital dark age' as formats go obsolete

Archaeological excavation destroys the site permanently, making the recorded data the only surviving evidence. Increasingly, this primary record is born-digital — laser scans, photogrammetry models, GIS databases, digital photographs — with no paper backup. But there is no standard format, no required archiving protocol, and no funded repository for most of this data. When storage media degrades or software becomes obsolete, the data is gone forever. Newham Museum received 900 digital files from excavations and found them unreadable upon arrival. This is not a theoretical risk: it is actively happening. The pain is irreversible — losing a digital excavation record is functionally identical to bulldozing the original site, because the excavation already destroyed it. The problem persists because archaeologists adopt new digital tools faster than archiving standards can keep up, there is no single mandated digital repository in the US (unlike the UK's Archaeology Data Service), and CRM firms have no contractual obligation to ensure long-term data preservation beyond project completion.