As part of its mission to ensure long-term preservation of and access to digital archaeological data, Digital Antiquity has partnered with Washington State University through principal investigator Dr. Timothy Kohler to add the records of the Dolores Archaeological Program (DAP) to tDAR. This project is supported by the Bureau of Reclamation, which sponsored the original archaeological investigations.
When the Bureau of Reclamation began the construction of McPhee Dam near Dolores, Colorado, federal law required an archaeological investigation of the area that would be affected by the new reservoir. During 1978-86 the Dolores Archaeological Program (DAP) employed more than 500 people and took over eight years to survey and retrieve information from 1600 prehistoric households and villages in the Dolores River Valley. The DAP was the largest public archaeology project ever undertaken in the United States. Archaeologists fully excavated 120 sites, providing an intensive look at Ancestral Puebloan life in the Dolores area. The resulting collections are preserved at the Anasazi Heritage Center, which is a legally-designated federal repository for archaeological materials from public lands.
The DAP digital files document a large amount of data from the recovery project area in southwestern Colorado, which is now submerged under the McPhee Reservoir. This collection is a remarkable acquisition for tDAR in terms of both its scope and depth; these data have been foundational to scholars studying the ecological, historical, and social relationships among ancient populations in the northern Southwest. Interpretations of human community dynamics based on the DAP data also are of general interest for comparative anthropological and archaeological studies. Once these data are contributed to tDAR, they will be available to a broader scientific community as well as to interested members of the general public.