Taking a look back at 2015

We had a busy year in 2015, tDAR continued to grow with significant contributions from the North Atlantic Biocultural Organization , US Air Force, and US Army Corps of Engineers. tDAR had two major software releases, Munsell and Neolithic which completely redesigned the Data Integration interface to make it easier to use, expanded access to usage statistics, and updated the visualization and mapping interfaces for tDAR.

We are continuing our work, begun in earnest last fall with the Corps of Engineers and the US Air Force on digital archaeological archives for their bases and other facilities. We are also still working with the Phoenix Area Office of the Bureau of Reclamation and Midwest Archeological Center of the National Park Service on their rich archives of archaeological material.

As part of our continuing agreements with Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) and Society for American Archaeology (SAA), we ran workshops highlighting best practices in digital curation at the annual meetings for SAA and AIA in San Francisco and New Orleans respectively. We also continue to provide student members with a number of no cost uploads for contributing their data to tDAR as part of our agreement with SAA.

Content added to tDAR in 2015

Usage Statistics

While we do not maintain detailed statistics on users or use to protect user and contributor privacy, we can share some interesting aggregate data. Below are the most frequently viewed and downloaded resources.

Resources (most viewed)

• Big Oak Faunal Analysis, 1982 (9881)
• Fauna Taxon Ontology – Southwest US (7554)
• Prehistoric Irrigation in Arizona: Symposium 1988 (7122)
• Mimbres Pottery Images Digital Database (MimPIDD) (6920)
• Problem: Fauna Taxon Ontology – Southwest US (4969)
• Fauna Element Ontology (4900)
• Fauna Taxon Ontology – TAG (UK) (4084)
• Sapelo Island (3355)
• Fauna Taxon Ontology – Eastern US (Outdated) (2679)
• Jordan’s Journey (44PG302) (2628)
• Food Crisis in Prehistory: Overpopulation and the Origins of Agriculture (2519)
• St Bees Man: A Cold Case Review (2209)
• Outdated: Fauna Taxon – Southwest US Ontology (3028) (2178)
• Lifelines: Black Families in Chicago. In Urban Anthropology In the United States (2143)
• Standards for Data Collection from Human Skeletal Remains (1909)
• Koster Site (1828)
• Spitalfields Project (1814)
• The Archaeology of Highland Chiriqui, Panama — Documents, Images, and Datasets (1777)
• Eaton Site (1681)
• Aztec Ruin Dendro Data (1519)

Resources (most Downloaded)

• Archeological Investigations at Joshua Tree National Park, California (41)
• Tikal Report 11: Georeferenced Map- “Ruins of Tikal” (with border) (35)
• Mimbres Pottery Database (Public) (27)
• Hohokam Archaeology along the Salt-Gila Aqueduct Central Arizona Project, Volume IV: Prehistoric Occupation of the Queen Creek Delta (25)
• Petroglyphs of the Picacho Mountains, South Central Arizona (25)
• Death, Society and Ideology in a Hohokam Community: Colonial and Sedentary Period Burials from La Ciudad (24)
• The Importance of Plow Zone Archaeology (23)
• Tikal Report 11: Georeferenced Map- “Ruins of Tikal” (without border) (23)
• Grand Challenges for Archaeology – Crowd Sourcing Report (22)
• The Excavations of Los Muertos and Neighboring Ruins in the Salt River Valley, Southern Arizona (21)
• Archaeological Ethnography in Western Iran (21)
• The 1982-1984 Excavations at Las Colinas: Material Culture (20)
• Humboldt County 1947-1948 Aerial Photo Index Table (20)
• Hayden Flour Mill: Landscape, Economy, and Community Diversity in Tempe, Arizona, Volume 1: Introduction, Historical Research, and Historic Architecture (20)
• Salt River Valley Canal System (20)
• An Historic Properties Survey of the King Range National Conservation Area Located in Humboldt County, California (BLM) (20)
• Tikal Report 11: Georeferenced Map- “Ruins of Tikal” (with border) (20)
• Submerged Cultural Resources Study: USS Arizona Memorial and Pearl Harbor National Historic Landmark (20)
• The Pueblo Grande Project: Material Culture (20)
• Tikal Report 11: Georeferenced Map- “Ruins of Tikal” (with border) (20)