Biocultural Heritage Information in a Virtual Environment (Biocultural HIVE)

Biocultural heritage - the physical remains of ancient humans, animals, plants and landscapes, as well as material and visual culture - is an important resource. It represents tangible evidence for human interactions with the natural world, biodiversity, food systems, human-animal-environmental health, and exploitation of organic raw materials. As such, there is a growing recognition that interdisciplinary studies of biocultural heritage can help address modern global challenges, all of which are fundamentally cultural with deep histories.

Yet biocultural heritage is a finite resource and one that is under threat. At the landscape scale, climate change is endangering heritage sites. Museum collections are being impacted by the curation crisis, which is seeing materials refused accession or deaccessioned without record. But there is also a significant threat to biocultural heritage from the research practices of scientists themselves.

Advances in archaeological science are seeing increasing quantities of material targeted for destructive analyses (e.g. aDNA, proteomics, isotopes, radiocarbon dating, organic residue analysis, and histology). Whilst such individual analyses generate transformative results, our networks and research partners (including national institutions, museum curators, archives, community archaeology groups and commercial units) have raised ethical issues associated with the destruction of biocultural heritage.

They have highlighted the overwhelming need for: 1) specimens to be preserved by 3D record; 2) scans to be made available for future analyses; 3) data from destructive analysis to be linked to 3D records in a way that is accessible to curators and broader research communities both in the UK and abroad. The last is particularly important to ensure that materials are not repeatedly sampled by different research groups and so that independent lines of evidence can be brought together.

To address these issues of collections preservation, storage and accessibility the Biocultural HIVE will:

Upgrade our existing physical archive space to better accommodate our own nationally important biocultural collections and provide appropriate environmentally controlled temporary storage for materials being analysed by our CResCa-funded digital imaging facility, SHArD-3D.

2. Create a new laboratory space so that researchers can access, and have space to study, our permanent and temporary collections.

3. Collate and standardise the large quantities of 3D and analytical data from our SHArD-3D collaborations and international UKRI, Wellcome Trust and ERC projects.

4. Use the data generated by point 3) to create and test an open-access, continuously updateable, digital repository (rather than closed-dataset repositories e.g. Archaeology Data Service) for the curation and sharing of digital 3D files and other analytical results.

5. Drawing on expertise from the UKRI funded GLAM-E we will embed ethical data practices into our digital platforms and co-create appropriate open-access policies with our partners.

6. Employ a Database Manager to 1) liaise with stakeholders and 2) populate and maintain the repository with the ultimate intention of migrating it to the RICHeS Digital Research Service at Daresbury, so that it is sustainable beyond the life of the project.

This resource will benefit the heritage science community and provide researchers with the ability to deposit, update, and access collections/data on an unprecedented scale. Beyond this it will create a new research platform for data mining, the application of deep-learning technologies, and ensure we are delivering world-leading heritage science.