The current issue of Archaeology magazine (September/October 2013), includes two articles related to collections of archaeological data and other information in tDAR.
One of the articles, “An Extreme Life” by Victoria Schlesinger, describes a long-term archaeological project by Ben Fitzhugh of the University of Washington to study the adaptation and 7,000 year history of human populations that once lived on the Kuril Islands, an 800-mile-long chain extending north from the island of Hokkaido in Japan to the Kamchataka Peninsula in Russia.
More detailed information about Fitzhugh’s project can be found in tDAR, where it is mainly accessable and available to other tDAR users. The Kuril Biocomplexity Project Archive (NSF 0508109) and Kuril Biocomplexity Research Collection contain a rich record of the archaeological research and sites on the Kuril Islands, including over 130 reports, sets of photos, and maps.
Fitzhugh’s Kuril project is part of a larger network of research projects, the Global Human Ecodynamics Alliance (GHEA), which is using tDAR as a means of sharing research data and other results among the cooperating projects and with the wider world. GHEA is an organization of social scientists, natural scientists, historians, educators, students, policy makers, and others interested in promoting cutting-edge research, education, and application of the socioecological dynamics of coupled human and natural systems across scales of space and time. The research coordination is funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation’s Office of Polar Programs Science.
Andrew Lawler’s article, “The Everlasting City” reviews past and current interpretations early urbanism in what is now southern Iraq. Lawler mentions current research by Jennifer Pournelle of the University of South Carolina aimed at understanding how climate change and shifting river systems impacted early Sumerian civilization. Pournelle also has set up and is building in tDAR a collection of documents and other information titled, “Ancient Civilizations: Mesopotamia." The collection, which is growing, is designed to include resources for exploring the foundation, growth, and persistence of the long history of "Mesopotamia" (literally, "between the rivers") – the lands watered by the Tigris and Euphrates.
We are delighted that tDAR provides these research projects with a digital repository where their data can be managed, made accessible (as appropriate), and preserved for future use. To get started using tDAR to manage your own digital archaeological information, please visit https://www.tdar.org/why-tdar/contribute/ today!