How to unravel the tangle. Using legacy data to interpret some key sites in Bronze Age southern Italy

Over the last decades, the rapid spread of technologies has enabled thorough data digitization processes. Digital conversion has frequently resulted in standardization procedures and data consolidation. Anyway, information stored in non-machine-readable formats is still prevalent in archaeology, and particularly for legacy data: the term “imperfection” appears to be quite appropriate when referring to it. This paper will address the problems of working with data from past excavations, seen as a promising but challenging field, full of imperfections and information losses (e.g. labels corrupted by time, hard-to-read handwriting, details scarcity and data leakage). The analysis builds on some Bronze Age case studies in Southern Italy (such as Torre Castelluccia and Porto Perone near Taranto, Apulia, Italy). Archaeological research in this area was particularly intense between the early 1900s and the 1960s, but many sites remain unpublished or only partially known. Excavation data from these contexts require an in-depth reexamination to gain a more comprehensive perspective on their occupation history and network relations. A significant step in information retrieval is the transition from a physical to a digital archive (here: MS Access database) to counter the risk of further damage and loss. This research aimed to answer some of the following questions: when does the maximum data loss occur? How much is gone, beyond the possibility of repair? How could we ascertain and fix the damage and formulate interpretive hypotheses? In fact, first-hand experience reveals that information is often lost not only throughout the excavation and documentation processes but also during the conservation stage (e.g. in archives, storages, and museum collections). We hope that our experience can be translated into a qualitative and possibly quantitative model for evaluating the loss of similar legacy data.