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Beginning in 1964, an academic lineage of Robert DuBois and his students, Daniel Wolfman and Jeffrey Eighmy, developed dedicated United States‐based archaeomagnetic research programs. Collectively, they analyzed over 5,377 archaeomagnetic sites, primarily from North America, dated to less than 2,000 years old. Yet despite their decades of effort, few journal publications resulted. Most of their published results are embedded in archeological reports, often without technical data, which limits the data's accessibility. Furthermore, when published, the results are generally averaged at the site level using statistical conventions different from today's standards, limiting the data's comparability and (re)usability. In 2015, we undertook a salvage archival study to digitize the surviving data and metadata from the scientists' individual estates and emeritus collections. We digitized measurement data from more than 51,000 specimens, reinterpreted them using modern conventions, and uploaded them to the FAIR‐adhering magnetic data repository, earthref.org/MagIC. The reinterpreted site‐level results from the three laboratories are mutually consistent, permitting the individual data sets to be combined and analyzed as single regional entities. Through incorporation into the MagIC repository, these legacy data are now accessible for incorporation into archaeomagnetic and global magnetic field modeling efforts, critical to understanding Earth's magnetic field variation through time. In the Four Corners region of the United States Southwest, this digitized archive advances the development of a new regional paleosecular variation curve used in archaeomagnetic dating. This project highlights both the value and complexities of managing legacy data; the many lessons learned to set a precedent for future paleomagnetic data recovery efforts. Plain Language Summary: Archaeomagnetism is the study of Earth's past magnetic field through researching the magnetic signatures retained in well‐dated archeological materials. The most commonly studied materials are those that have experienced high temperatures due to human‐made fires. Due to humans' global occupation, there is a potential for globally distributed archaeomagnetic sampling, which is essential for high‐resolution global magnetic field models. However, there is considerable variation in the documentation and accessibility of data from certain regions, including North America. In 2015, a salvage archival project was initiated to recover the life's work of three North American archaeomagnetists. The effort resulted in the digitization and formatting of the data within DuBois' and Wolfman's estates, and Eighmy's archive. In total, measurement data from more than 51,000 specimens, from 5,377 archeological features, were processed and uploaded to a centralized online data repository, MagIC. This repository ensures that the data, representing 130 person‐years of work, are now findable and accessible, permitting the data to be re‐used in future modeling projects. One such application for these data is the development of a new regional model for the Four Corners region of the United States Southwest that traces the location of the magnetic north pole through time. Key Points: We digitized 6 decades of legacy archaeodirectional measurements from three archives (>51k specimens), adding them to a FAIR repository, MagICThe site‐level results (reanalyzed using modern statistical conventions) are consistent between the archivesThe majority of the data have site provenance in North America and are dated to less than 2,000 years old [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
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