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Environmental archaeology is a complex mix of empirical analysis and qualitative interpretation.It is increasingly data science oriented, and databases and online resources are becoming increasinglyimportant in large scale synthesis research on changes in climate, environments and human activities.Research funders, journals and universities place much emphasis on the use of data repositories toensure transparency and reusability in the research process. Although these are important, researchersthemselves, however, may have more use for research databases which are oriented more towardsadvanced querying and exploratory data analysis than conforming to archiving standards. This paperexplores the pros and cons of these different approaches. It also discusses and problematizes somekey concepts in research data management, including the definitions of data and metadata, along withthe FAIR principles. Research examples are provided from a broad field of environmental archaeologyand palaeoecology. In contrast to most publications, the developer’s perspective is also included, anda worked example using the Strategic Environmental Archaeology Database (SEAD) to investigate fossilbeetle data demonstrates the implementation of some of this in the real world. This example may befollowed online using the SEAD browser, and all described data downloaded from there. After providingboth encouragement and warnings on the use of digital resources for synthesis research, some suggestionsare made for moving forward.