Citizen science, as a process of volunteer participation through crowdsourcing, facilitates the
creation of mass data sets needed to address subtle and large-scale patterns in complex
phenomena. Citizen science efforts in other field disciplines such as biology, geography,
and astronomy indicate how new web-based interfaces can enhance and expand upon
archaeologists' existing platforms of volunteer engagement such as field schools, community
archaeology, site stewardship, and professional–avocational partnerships. Archaeological�…

In archaeology, we are accustomed to investing great effort into collecting data from
fieldwork, museum collections, and other sources, followed by detailed description, rigorous
analysis, and in many cases ending with publication of our findings in short, highly
concentrated reports or journal articles. Very often, these publications are all that is visible of
this lengthy process, and even then, most of our journal articles are only accessible to
scholars at institutions paying subscription fees to the journal publishers. While this�…