Element Three
Element Three - Analysing Present and Assessing Future Archive Creation
This project element aimed to establish the composition and level of archive creation now and in the future, in order to gauge curation needs. This involved desk-based research and interviews with a wide range of archive creators, curators and marine industry sector representatives.
The key archive creating sectors were surveyed to characterise:
- The type of projects (eg recovery, survey, evaluation, excavation), and the number of projects represented;
- The nature, components and scale of archives produced by each type of project undertaken
- The number of active and past projects;
- The speed at which archive material is being created and relative volumes; and
- Expected future archive creation.
To examine the main mechanisms through which archives are being created, the types of project generating archives and to review future levels of archives creation interviews were undertaken with curators, regulators, marine industry sectors and seabed owners. This sought to establish:
- Current levels of development, extraction and/- or construction work within the marine zone;
- How archives are affected by current development and consenting frameworks;
- Predictions for future expansion of work; and
- Planned large scale developments predicted to create archaeological archives or other expected ‘spikes in development work.