What is Open Archaeology?

It's becoming fashionable to stick the epithet "open" on just about anything days (I should know - I do it all the time.) But what does it mean to speak of "open archaeology", say?

Well, one important element of "classic" openness like open source is the freedom to take knowledge and re-use it in new ways. If you want to see what that might mean in the context of archaeology, here's a rather brilliant site (apart from the heavy use of Flash) that gives a hint of what's possible:

For more than a decade, archaeologists and scholars have gathered in central Turkey to explore the remains of the 9,000-year-old village of Çatalhöyük. First excavated in the 1960s, Çatalhöyük became world-famous for its dense architecture and spectacular wall decorations. Between 1997 and 2003, a team from the University of California Berkeley worked intensively on one building there, bringing to light the life history of a Neolithic home. Remixing Çatalhöyük features the investigations and discoveries of the BACH team, who invites you to participate in the interpretation of their work. Explore themed collections, create original projects, and contribute your own “remix” of Çatalhöyük.

Quite rightly, it's just won first prize in the Open Archaeology Prize at the Alexandria Archive Institute. (Via Open Access News.)