It was only a matter of time before a ‘big data’ company latched onto archaeology for commercial purposes. Reported in a New Scientist article last week (with an unfortunate focus on ‘treasure’), a UK data analytics start-up called Democrata is incorporating archaeological data into a system to allow engineering and construction firms to predict the likelihood of encountering archaeological remains. This, of course, is what local authority archaeologists do, along with environmental impact assessments undertaken by commercial archaeology units. But this isn’t (yet) an argument about a potential threat to archaeological jobs.

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