Tag: grant

Reports in Digital Archaeology: a Digital Antiquity Publication Series

Posted on by Leigh Anne Ellison

Digital Antiquity announces Reports in Digital Archaeology, a series devoted to issues related to archaeological information, including:

  • research and practice in digital archiving of archaeological materials,
  • policy and other challenges facing the preservation of archaeological results,
  • advanced uses of tDAR,
  • research projects funded by the DA-tDAR Grants Program, and
  • major data accessions or partnerships.

The Reports series is free of charge and available on the Digital Antiquity website.

The first two Reports have been published and include, “Building tDAR: Review, Redaction, and Ingest of Two Reports Series” (J. Watts, June 2011) and “Policies, Preservation, and Access to Digital Resources: The Digital Antiquity 2010 National Repositories Survey” (J. Watts, September 2011). The first paper focuses on the process of preparing pre-existing archaeological reports for and ingesting them to tDAR, discussing especially the problems presented by a series of reports spanning thirty years of archaeological work and publication. The second is geared toward an analysis of the present state of digital archaeological preservation and access on the national scale, and helps to explain many of the challenges associated with the management of legacy digital resources.

If you are interested in submitting to Reports in Digital Archaeology, please contact Digital Antiquity.

Digital Antiquity-tDAR Grants Program Results

Posted on by Leigh Anne Ellison

Digital Antiquity is pleased to announce the following grants for the 2011 Digital Antiquity-tDAR Grants Program.  A few additional proposals still are under consideration.  Congratulations are in order to:

  1. Lori Reed of the National Park Service for her proposal, “Aztec Ruins National Monument Digital Archives Project;”
  2. Gregory Brown for his proposal, “Ingestion of Data from Comparative Archaeological Study of Colonial Chesapeake Culture Project;”
  3. Stephen Mrozowski and Christa Beranek of the Fiske Center for Archaeological Research (University of Massachusetts, Boston) for their proposal, “Fiske Center for Archaeological Research; Application to Digital Antiquity”;
  4. Jennifer Haas of the Great Lakes Archaeological Research Center for her proposal, “Great Lakes Archaeological Center Proposal for tDAR Archiving” (adding four large-scale projects from the northern Midwest to tDAR);
  5. David R. Abbott and M. Scott Thompson of Arizona State University and Cory Breternitz of Paleowest, Inc. for their proposal, “A Digital Antiquity Proposal: Ingesting Digital Data Sets and Project Reports from Soil System, Inc’s Data Recovery at Pueblo Grande, Phoenix, AZ;”
  6. Eric Ingbar of Gnomon, Inc., and Robert G. Elston for their proposal, “Publication of Digital Data from Tosawihi Quarries, Nevada;”
  7. Pearce Paul Creasman and Jeffrey S. Dean of the Laboratory of Tree Ring Research (University of Arizona) for their proposal, “Incorporating Archaeological Tree-Ring Dates and Metadata from the US Southwest into the Digital Archaeological Record;”
  8. Matthew T. Boulanger and Michael D. Glascock of the Archaeometry Laboratory at the University of Missouri Research Reactor for their proposal, “Digitization and Dissemination of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Archaeometric and Archaeological Database;”
  9. Stephen Reichardt and Thomas H. Guderjan of the Blue Creek Archaeological Project, University of Texas at Tyler for their proposal, “A Digital Data Archiving Approach to Managing Data from the Ancient Maya Civilization” (data from Blue Creek site, Belize);
  10. Alycia Hayes and Derek Toms of the National Park Service for their proposal, “Casa Grande Ruins National Monument Grant Proposal Award Request;”
  11. Michael Nassaney of Western Michigan University for his proposal, “Digital Storage of Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Data;” and
  12. James Roscoe of the Humboldt State University Cultural Resources Facility for his proposal, “Humboldt State University Cultural Resources Facility; Digital Antiquities Grant Proposal” (records pertaining to archaeology and history of Humboldt County, California).

    We thank all who submitted proposals to the Digital Antiquity-tDAR Grants Program, and we are excited to partner with the funded investigators as they work to ingest new data into tDAR!

    Status of tDAR Grants Program

    Posted on by Leigh Anne Ellison

    The Digital Antiquity tDAR Grants Program has received a wide range of grant proposals for digital archaeological data preservation and curation projects.  Proposals have been submitted by CRM firms, public agencies, and academic and research organizations.

    The evaluation of received proposals is underway and awards will be announced as proposals are approved.

    Proposals are still being accepted and will be reviewed in the order in which they are received.  To enter a proposal, please review the guidelines for preparation and submission on the Digital Antiquity web page.

    One Size Does Not Fit All: New NSF Grant

    Posted on by Leigh Anne Ellison

    Principle investigators Keith Kintigh and K. Selçuk Candan recently secured a NSF Information Integration and Informatics small project grant for their proposal, “One Size Does Not Fit All: Empowering the User with User-Driven Integration.” Responding to the inefficiency of current schemes, which sacrifice possible data uses in order to produce early integration, User-Driven Integration (UDI) is an approach that takes advantage of expert opinions from the users of integrated data. Scientists and decision-makers have different needs and expectations from data integration operations, and their input will improve data management in complex systems.

    UDI also benefits students: undergraduate Honors capstone projects and graduate computer science courses will be formed to test and improve the approach. tDAR data structure is in line with the UDI approach, which values user feedback over structured data, integrating dynamic and variable data sets which may mesh in a variety of ways.

    Digital Antiquity tDAR Grants Program

    Posted on by Leigh Anne Ellison

    Digital Antiquity is developing a grants program to support the archiving of digital archaeological data and documents in tDAR (the Digital Archaeological Record), a new international digital repository.  Reports and data shared through tDAR are made accessible to the public on the web and their long-term preservation is ensured.

    CRM firms, public agencies, individuals, universities, colleges, and other organizations are invited to submit brief proposals explaining the value of the information to be contributed.  A wide array of projects will be considered, such as individual projects, regional archives, and thematic research.  Grants will be awarded in two categories:  up to $ 2,000, and up to $ 10,000.  We anticipate making approximately 40 awards.  Rapid review of proposals will begin on 25 February 2011 and continue until until funds are committed.

    Specific criteria and instructions will be made available by mid-December at http//digitalantiquity.org/grants.

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    The Creation of Digital Antiquity is Made Possible by an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grant

    Posted on by Leigh Anne Ellison

    The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation provided a grant of $1.29 million dollars to establish the Digital Antiquity organization and fund the development and maintenance of an international digital repository for archaeological data and documents.  The repository, the Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR), is established and available for search and for contributors who wish to deposit digital archaeological data or documents. Instructions and easy-to-use web interface screens are available at the tDAR website.

    Digital Antiquity Project Receives Mellon Foundation Planning Grant

    Posted on by Leigh Anne Ellison

    In 2007, a multidisciplinary team of researchers from Archaeology Data Services at the University of York, Arizona State University, the University of Arkansas, the Pennsylvania State University, SRI Foundation, and Washington State University was awarded an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grant to develop a long-term plan for the organization and operation of integrated digital archaeological data repository. This activity led to the creation of an organization, archaeoinformatics.org.  Utilizing their planning grant, the members of archaeoinformatics.org developed detailed plan.

    The plan called for development of a user-friendly and attractive but technologically and financially feasible archaeological repository to provide for much wider accessibility to archaeological data and its long-term preservation.  The plan led to the development of a more detailed proposal to the Mellon Foundation for funds to create Digital Antiquity.

    Click here for a copy of the 2008 report on the results of the planning grant.

    NSF Human Social Dynamics Grant Awarded for Development of Archaeological Data Integration System

    Posted on by Leigh Anne Ellison

    Archaeologists and computer scientists in SHESC and the School of Engineering at ASU were awarded a 3-year grant for the development of a knowledge-based archaeological data integration system. The purpose of the system is to amalgamate long-term archaeological data on society, population, and environment in an easily searchable database, so that scientists across disciplines can utilize important archaeological data sets. This revolutionary project involved a multidisciplinary team of researchers, graduate student assistants and undergraduate interns. One of the outcomes of the research project was the prototype of the Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR) which is the repository further developed and used by Digital Antiquity.

    For more information, please see the full 2006 Project Summary.