6 What does the future hold for consent and personal data protection?

If we look outside archaeology, we may be inspired by the approaches that are being explored around GDPR in ways that honour the complexity of personal data.

Here we see efforts to:

• develop collective or communal data ownership Hicks, 2023 and differential levels of access to the data Hacıgüzeller et al., 2021, while acknowledging that the latter might contradict the concept of open access.

• support people to critically consider the long-term implications of their anonymity and privacy decisions before signing off on their consent Filippin & Modolo, 2022.

• ensure that data protection guidance is co-constructed with those who have traditionally been excluded, and those whose voices are not usually heard Yao et al., 2025. In archaeology’s case, these people might be the many excavators, lab and specialist assistants whose labour and know-how are often made invisible in today’s archives (as was usually the case in the past too).

Continuing to explore ways to sensitively handle personal data is imperative to ensuring the future reuse of archaeological archives.

6.1 Acknowledgements¶

TETRARCHs was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) in the UK, the Research Council of Lithuania, the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport in Slovenia, the FORTE Swedish Research Council for Health, Working life and Welfare, and the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) in Belgium under the CHANSE ERA-NET Co-fund programme, which has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, under Grant Agreement no 101004509.

Special thanks are owed to the individuals who took part in the TETRARCHs consultative workshops, whose findings significantly informed the content of this Guide.