Making knowledge work harder with OASIS

There’s been an amazing discovery at your dig, or you’ve made a big breakthrough in your research. What's next? Our Spatial Information Manager Peter McKeague gives us the lowdown on digitally reporting archaeological fieldwork and surveys of our built heritage.

Did you know that around 900 archaeological projects take place in Scotland every year? That’s a lot of digging and discoveries from academics and community groups, as well as companies providing commercial services.

For the record

Each year, the outcomes of these projects are published in the latest edition of Archaeology Scotland’s book Discovery and Excavation in Scotland. Since the early 2000s, an online recording system called OASIS has also been available across Scotland and England through the Archaeology Data Service (ADS).

Anyone carrying out archaeological work or built heritage surveys and research can upload their fieldwork reports to OASIS. National heritage organisations (in Scotland, that’s us!) will be prompted to review and license the submissions. Once that’s complete, they can be added to the ADS Library.

OASIS allows researchers to see what types of fieldwork are being undertaken across Scotland, which monuments are being investigated and why they’re of interest.

Modernising OASIS

While OASIS may be dedicated to recording the past, we don’t want the resource itself to be historic!

Twenty years on since its launch, we’ve worked with the ADS, Archaeology Scotland and Historic England to modernise and streamline OASIS. Reporting fieldwork should now be easier, and we’re able to make better use of the information received. Here’s a few examples.

Take your pick

A lot of the fields in the previous OASIS form asked users to enter information as free text. Inevitably, misspellings and typos crept in.

There’s also the question of which terms and definitions we use to describe monuments, objects and archaeological activities. Every archaeologist in Scotland knows what a broch is, but would we all describe one in the same way?

The new OASIS form has therefore introduced pick-lists and look-up tables, allowing users to choose from common vocabulary and descriptions, provided by Heritagedata.org. This makes things more consistent and improves the quality of information reported.

Location, location, location

It’s likely that a fair few readers of this article will have found themselves traipsing across moor and mountain searching for an elusive site of interest. We don’t want to replicate that online!

Reporting the correct location of a site was the most common error in the old OASIS form. It’s all too easy to transpose digits to when entering a grid reference. So, as well as typing in a grid reference, users are encouraged to upload accurate plans of the project area, including excavation trench locations.

Once the data has been uploaded, OASIS will automatically add the correct local council and civil parish, as well as matching it to the relevant entry in the historic environment record.

Giving credit

As with the archaeologists Julian C. Richards and Julian D. Richards, mistaken identity can sometimes lead to confusion over who should be credited for articles, projects or research. To tackle this, OASIS uses ORCID to uniquely identify an author.

Open Researcher & Contributor IDs is a global system which issues a persistent digital identifier for individual researchers. It can be used across online databases - crucial given the potential for sharing information gathered by OASIS with other applications and websites.

For example, OASIS users can highlight how their discoveries can contribute to key research topics set out by the Scottish Archaeological Research Framework (ScARF). Elsewhere, marine projects can be shared with anyone working offshore through the Marine Environment Data Information Network (MEDIN) portal.

And the publication of Discovery and Excavation in Scotland will also be made easier, thanks to OASIS collating its data into a downloadable draft report.

Want more detail?

If you're involved with OASIS, you can get all the latest news and updates on the OASIS website.

An online guide book?is also available, plus there’s detailed step-by-step video guides on the OASIS Training Vimeo channel.