COST-ARKWORK Societal Challenges Survey Dataset

A survey was relating to the societal role of archaeology and the impact of societal challenges on archaeological practices is based on views collected from the members of COST Action Archaeological Practices and Knowledge Work in the Digital Environment (www.arkwork.eu). The purpose of this survey is to collect views from COST-ARKWORK members on the relation of contemporary societal challenges and archaeological practices. The survey was administered online using Survey & Report tool (survey form, Fig. 1) hosted by Swedish University Computer Network (Sunet). The survey was open from May 8, 2020 until June1, 2020. The participants of the network consist of over 200 experts of archaeological practices from a broad range of disciplinary backgrounds from archaeology to information science, museum studies, computer science and business studies, including researchers and practitioners from 30 European countries. 50 members of the network participated in the survey. The views of the Action participants were collected using an online survey with two open ended questions: 1. “From your perspective, what is the role and value of archaeology in helping to solve contemporary societal problems?”; and, 2. “What societal changes and challenges are likely to affect archaeology and archaeological practices the most during the next five years?”. In addition, the respondents were asked to indicate whether they identified themselves as being an archaeologist or not. 64% (32/50) of the experts identified themselves as archaeologists while the rest described themselves as non-archaeologists. The experts shared their opinions as individuals, not as representants of specific institutions or countries.This dataset is based upon work from COST Action ARKWORK, supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology)