This article evaluates rates of osteoarthritis of the lower limb in human remains from Deir el-Medina in order to compare the health of the residents of Deir el-Medina with previous studies on other ancient Egyptian and Nubian populations. This study focuses on osteological observations from the commingled New Kingdom human remains documented during the 2012-2014 field seasons of the Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale. This is the first publication of osteoarthritis for the human remains at Deir el-Medina, a dataset which complements comparable populations at sites such as Amarna, Giza, and Tombos. It demonstrates that men in the village of Deir el-Medina experienced significantly higher rates of osteoarthritis in the ankle and knee in comparison to women at Deir el-Medina. Rates of osteoarthritis in the lower limb at Deir el-Medina generally fall between workers' cemeteries and middle-class or elite cemeteries.This study also includes data from Deir el-Medina's detailed textual record and intact landscape in order to determine how occupation influenced these higher rates of osteoarthritis. The duration, intensity, and frequency of the workmen's hikes are reconstructed based on the surrounding landscape and 42 texts recording work days. This study compares rates of osteoarthritis with these datasets in order to document how the strain, duration, and frequency of the workmen's hikes may have impacted overall rates of osteoarthritis. Consequently, data from the texts and landscape surrounding Deir el-Medina not only corroborate osteoarthritis patterns, but offer detailed daily life activity which can be used as a comparison for broader studies on osteoarthritis in ancient and modern populations.

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Archaeological excavations are comprised of interdisciplinary teams that create, manage, and share data as they unearth and analyse material culture. These team-based settings are ripe for collective curation during these data lifecycle stages. However, findings from four excavation sites show that the data interdisciplinary teams create are not well integrated. Knowing this, we recommended opportunities for collective curation to improve use and reuse of the data within and outside of the team.

This article presents research on archaeological data creation and management practices at two excavations in Europe in order to gain a better understanding of how to align these practices with the data reuse needs of a broader research community. The Secret Life of Data project follows the life cycle of data from the field to the digital repository to better understand opportunities and challenges in data interpretation, publication, and preservation. Our “Slow Data” approach focuses not on maximizing the speed and quantity of data but, rather, on emphasizing curation, contextualization, communication, and broader understanding. Through a mixed-methods approach of interviews, field observations, and excavation data assessments, we recommended changes (both technical and organizational) to improve data creation and management practices. We report our findings and offer readers guidance on streamlining data collection for reuse during excavation.

Data collection takes up much of the already limited time archaeologists have to excavate and often requires additional time to digitize. Moreover, despite efforts to standardize data, archaeologists often find errors such as blank or incorrectly recorded fields. To avoid these issues, several projects have made use of tablet computers to streamline and digitize data, but this process can be opaque, specialized, and expensive. Previous research has addressed neither the general feasibility of developing and utilizing mobile devices for data collection nor the quality and quantity of these data. In this article, I review existing methods and practices for integrating data collection on mobile devices in order to evaluate the costs and feasibility of transitioning to a mobile-based data collection system. Through a case study using OsteoSurvey, a series of bioarchaeological data collection forms for Android tablets, I assess the efficacy of data collection on mobile devices. An experiment comparing OsteoSurvey to traditional paper forms demonstrates that participants saved time and made fewer mistakes using the OsteoSurvey forms, resulting in the collection of 21–32 percent more data. Consequently, data collection with mobile devices can significantly increase the overall productivity and quality of archaeological research