Cite this as: Laužikas, R., Jovaišaitė-Blaževičienė, I., Kelpšienė, I. and Šuminas, A. 2026 Digital Archaeological Data in the Creative Industries: access, barriers, and the potential for inspiration, Internet Archaeology 71. https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.71.2
This paper explores how creative professionals—such as artists, writers, and architects—engage with digital archaeological and heritage data. Through a quality-in-use framework, the study examines the motivations, access methods, and barriers encountered by non-archaeology professionals' audiences. The research combined interviews, eye-tracking experiments, and post-experiment questionnaires. Findings reveal three levels of interest in archaeological data within the creative industries: inspiration, improvisation, and reconstruction—each requiring varying information behaviour and degrees of data accuracy. At the heart of the study is the inspirational use of data, highlighting how non-specialists seek archaeological resources for creative purposes. Creative industries professionals were chosen as the study group because understanding their methods of accessing digital archaeological data and the barriers they face is not only relevant to the creative industries but also contributes to broader knowledge about how non-archaeology professionals engage with data and information produced by professional archaeologists in archaeology data archives, and how such data can be understood and accessed by broader audiences. The study identifies four key barriers: (i) professional archaeological terminology, (ii) search behaviours shaped by simple keyword search, (iii) lack of interpretive context, and (iv) a predominance of text over visuals—factors that limit the reuse of archaeological data in creative and public-facing contexts. These challenges limit the accessibility and creative reuse of archaeological data. The research emphasises the need for more user-friendly, visually-rich, and interpretative resources to foster engagement between archaeology and broader creative communities. This research was conducted as part of the TETRARCHs (Transforming Data Re-use in Archaeology) project.
Corresponding author: Rimvydas Laužikas
[email protected]
Vilnius University
Indrė Jovaišaitė-Blaževičienė
[email protected]
Vilnius University
Ingrida Kelpšienė
[email protected]
Vilnius University
Andrius Šuminas
[email protected]
Vilnius University
Figure 1: Heat map depicting search activity on the Archaeological Interactive Reports platform Home page.
Figure 2: Searching for a word search option on the Archaeological Interactive Reports platform Home page.
Figure 3: Heat map depicting search activity on the Archaeological Interactive Reports platform second level (archaeology site) page.
Figure 4: Heat map depicting the ADS platform Home page search activity.
Figure 5: Heat map depicting search activity on the ADS platform second-level page.
Table 1: Non-archaeology professional archaeology data users, users' needs and behaviours
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