On the meaning, ethics and approach of archaeology towards open science. An essay presented from the Central European perspective

Abstract

The paper brings thoughs on the social role of archaeology in current period of open science. To a large extent, the ethics of archaeological work is deeply related to the transformation that civilization is experiencing on the threshold of the third millennium in the context of the rapid transition to the digital age of the so-called information society. This movement is clearly manifested in the field of science. Questions concerning the proper (i.e. early) timing of the process of a complete publication of finished archaeological projects is understood as one of the key problems of current archaeology, specifically in the Czech Republic. In the context of the possibilities of open science, in which thanks to the ever-increasing amount of collected data stored in digital formats (repositories), which can be linked and their content shared, archaeology therefore has a unique opportunity to make data accessible to a much greater extent than was the case until recently.