Most archaeological investigations in the United States and other countries must comply with preservation laws, especially if they are on government property or supported by government funding. Academic and cultural resource management (CRM) studies have explored various social, temporal, and environmental contexts and produce an ever-increasing volume of archaeological data. More and more data are born digital, and many legacy data are digitized. There is a building effort to synthesize and integrate data at a massive scale and create new data standards and management systems. Taxpayer dollars often fund archaeological studies that are intended, in spirit, to promote historic preservation and provide public benefits. However, the resulting data are difficult to access and interoperationalize, and they are rarely collected and managed with their long-term security, accessibility, and ethical reuse in mind. Momentum is building toward open data and open science as well as Indigenous data sovereignty and governance. The field of archaeology is reaching a critical point where consideration of diverse constituencies, concerns, and requirements is needed to plan data collection and management approaches moving forward. This theme issue focuses on challenges and opportunities in archaeological data collection and management in academic and CRM contexts.

Presentamos una revisión exhaustiva de la información disponible sobre la tecnología lítica de las sociedades finipleistocénicas de la Meseta Central de Santa Cruz (Patagonia, Argentina). Hasta el momento esta sólo había sido estudiada de manera fragmentaria. Abordamos de forma integrada los procesos de producción y consumo registrando tres aspectos de la tecnología: disponibilidad de materias primas en los paisajes donde se encuentran los sitios; estructura de los conjuntos y sus características tecnomorfológicas; y funcionalidad de los instrumentos. Los resultados indican que la disponibilidad de recursos líticos habría influenciado en la organización de la tecnología, en la elección de los lugares donde se desarrollaron distintas prácticas sociales, y en el modo en que se estructuraron las actividades de producción y consumo entre distintos sitios. Se prefirió el diseño de instrumentos unifaciales sobre soportes generalizados, pero también se elaboraron diseños que implicaron mayor inversión de trabajo. Así, las formas de uso y las funciones a las cuales fueron destinados los instrumentos influyeron en otros aspectos de la tecnología.

In the 54 years since passage of the National Historic Preservation Act, more than 56 million ha of land have been surveyed in the United States, and nearly one million cultural resources have been identified and recorded. These efforts have produced hundreds of thousands of project reports, vast collections of data, and a wealth of descriptive information about the past. The accumulated data can be used to generate important new knowledge about the past, with many scientific and management implications, but remain largely untapped. Following current approaches, many resources will be damaged or lost before effective strategies for studying or preserving them can be developed. Synthesis and modeling are needed in creative mitigation efforts to identify which resources to preserve and study and how best to do so with limited time and funding. This article explores the potential for compiling and synthesizing large cultural and environmental datasets within a geographic information system to model the nature and distribution of cultural resources. It is argued that dedicated synthesis and modeling of cultural resource management data will allow development of more effective and proactive research and management strategies, providing lasting benefit to diverse scientific and traditional communities and the public.