Since 2008, the Michigan State University Excavations at Isthmia has been engaged in an effort to digitize and share openly the contents of its archive of archaeological information. In addition to complications common to all archival projects, this effort has also encountered difficulties with sharing the evidence that has been generated according to decades-old traditions of archaeological fieldwork. Where today many academic institutions and professional organizations have established policies that protect individuals on archaeological projects, these codes of ethics can only highlight moments in the past when such practices were not observed. Moreover, they do not suggest a means of remedy or redress. Thus, for archival archaeologists, simple questions of intellectual property, publication rights, and the transfer of copyright between institutional sponsors do not have easy answers. This paper discusses three examples of the challenges to observing contemporary academic ethics in an archival setting: the use of memoranda of understanding in (re)establishing publication rights, the search for former project staff to establish intellectual property rights, and the publication of unattributed archival materials in digital format. Hopefully, these experiences will raise awareness of places where such older traditions remain in practice and in so doing, show that archival archaeology can play a role in shaping future fieldwork as it looks critically at our methodological past.