Working with digital curators at the Center for Digital Antiquity, the University Press of Colorado has added to the Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR) information about 27 of its books on archaeological topics.

The subject matter of the books includes a wide range of topics and locations, including the Maya area, Amazonia, Colorado, and the American Southwest.  Registered tDAR users may download the books’ tables of contents and introductions from the tDAR record.

One of the most recent books in the UPC catalog, Surviving Sudden Environmental Change: Answers from Archaeology, edited by Jago Cooper and Payson Sheets, may be downloaded in its entirety,  http://core.tdar.org/document/374944.

This arrangement adds to the archaeological information already available through tDAR, whose content is indexed for searches by Google and other main search engines, and exposes the University Press of Colorado’s archaeological catalog to searchers who otherwise may be unaware of its available books.

You can find the tDAR collection that lists the UPC publications here.

Digital Antiquity solicits proposals to support the archiving of digital archaeological data and documents in tDAR (the Digital Archaeological Record – http://core.tdar.org), a international digital repository. Reports and data shared through tDAR are made accessible on the web and their long-term preservation is ensured.

Public agencies, CRM firms, 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 up to $7,000 will be awarded.

Rapid review of proposals will begin 15 May, 2012 and continue until funds are committed.

Complete details at http://digitalantiquity.org/grants

Digital Antiquity has added three new material types to tDAR’s record entry page. The inclusion of the new material types was done in response to the requests of users and in an attempt to make the metadata more reflective of document contents.  The three new material types are:

Basketry: Artifacts (e.g., food and storage baskets, mats, shields, fans, sandals, other plaited or coiled slats/splints/stems/vines/etc., bundles of slats/splints, knotted ties, etc.) made from rigid or semi-rigid plant materials (e.g., grasses, roots, reeds or rushes, split wood).  An example of this is Perishable: Coiled Basket AMNH 29.0/9502 from the Aztec West Ruin: Perishable Artifacts and Pottery from Excavations by the American Museum of Natural History project.

Hide: Artifacts (e.g., blankets or other coverings, clothing, bags, shoes) made from animal skins or pelts. An example of this is Perishable: Hide Piece AZRU8-2927 from the Aztec West Ruin: Perishable Artifacts and Pottery from Excavations by the American Museum of Natural History project.

Textiles: Artifacts (e.g., clothing, bags, woven cloth, cordage, etc.) comprised of fibers and/or cord that are made from plant or animal material (e.g., animal hair, cotton, flax, hemp, other vegetal fibers.  An example of this is Perishable: Cotton Textile AZRU8-2733 from the Aztec West Ruin: Perishable Artifacts and Pottery from Excavations by the American Museum of Natural History project.

As always, Digital Antiquity and tDAR remain committed to the preservation and management of digital data.  We appreciate all input that will assist in making tDAR more accessible and relevant.

Digital Antiquity representatives will be on hand at the 77^th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA) in Memphis, Tennessee from April 18-22, 2012.

 

Participate in a tDAR Workshop:

On Wednesday, April 18 and Saturday, April 21 from 1 – 4 PM, Digital Antiquity will present an intensive workshop entitled “Using tDAR (the Digital Archaeological Record) to Improve Your Professional Productivity.” The workshop will use tDAR as a lens to focus on issues of data sharing, maintaining confidentiality, citation and fair use, public engagement, and digital preservation. Digital Antiquity instructors will demonstrate the basic use of tDAR to participants, who are encouraged to bring their own sample images and data to upload during the session. Attendance is free of additional charge, but is limited to 30 persons per session (one Wednesday and one Saturday) and requires pre-registration online or via mail or fax using the advance registration form. Don’t forget to register by March 17 to receive discounts on the normal meeting fee as well as some workshops and outings!

 

Visit the Booth:

Don’t forget to visit us at the tDAR booth (#615) in the Exhibit Hall open from 9-5 April 19-21!

Attend one of the forums:

Digital Antiquity will also be hosting a Forum on Sunday, April 22 from 8 AM – 12 PM called “Using the Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR) for Management, Research and Education.” Discussants include researchers from a variety of backgrounds who have used tDAR for their academic research, through Digital Antiquity grants, and for their doctoral dissertation research. This forum requires no additional registration—we hope to see you there!

Digital Antiquity will be co-hosting a Forum with the Archaeology Data Service in the UK on Thursday, April 19^th in the evening called “Digital Data Standards and ‘Best Practices’ Needed for Access to and Preservation of Archaeological Information.” This forum will focus on the recently updated Guides to Good Practice, and improving preservation and access of archaeological information.

Digital Antiquity Staff will also be contributing to the following SAA Events:

• The Impact of Special Purpose Institutions on the Future of Archaeology
• Digital Data Standards and “Best Practices” Needed for Access to and Preservation of Archaeological Information
• The Future of Archaeological Publishing
• Virtual Archaeology: The Creation, Dissemination, and Use of Virtualized Artifacts, Sites, Assemblages, and Archives
• Mortuary Practices in the American Southwest: Patterns and Inference from Regional Databases
• Capacity-Building for Archaeology in the 21^st Century: How will People Manage the Information Explosion

Remember, even if you are not able to make it out to Memphis this year, you can still explore and use tDAR by registering, browsing and searching today.

Preserving archaeological information, facilitating access to a wide range of digital documents and data, and enhancing archaeological research are vital services that Arizona State University’s Center for Digital Antiquity provides for researchers, students and the public.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded a grant of $1.2 million beginning in March 2012 that will support the center’s operations and development. The grant enables the center to greatly expand the content of its digital repository, to enlarge the community of users and to continue development and enhancement of software to improve the repository user’s experience.

The Center for Digital Antiquity develops, maintains and oversees the Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR), the country’s largest digital repository of world-wide archaeological data and information. The Center was established in 2009 with support from an earlier grant from the Mellon Foundation.

Technology has changed the way that people create and store information – moving from books and paper to digital files stored on tape, floppy disks, CD-ROMs and other media. A problem associated with this shift is that digital files are far more susceptible to loss due to degradation of storage media, software obsolescence and inadequate documentation.

When this happens with archaeological data, it is especially tragic. It entails a loss of irreplaceable information about our national and global heritage and represents a waste of time, effort and public money that has been expended to collect, analyze and report the data.

“In laboratory-based science, experiments can be repeated; however, you can’t dig a site twice,” said Keith Kintigh, ASU professor and sustainability scientist, who was the principal investigator for the first Mellon grant and is a co-principal investigator on the new grant. “The archaeological record provides our only access to most of human history. For example, human societies both contribute to and respond to gradual environmental change. Archaeological evidence allows us to better understand the conditions under which societies are resilient to long-term change, and the configurations that lead to collapse.”

Francis P. McManamon, Center for Digital Antiquity executive director and principal investigator for the new Mellon grant, notes that “approximately 40,000 archaeological investigations take place every year in the United States, yet only a handful thoroughly publish their findings and the supporting data in traditional, general distribution books. Most projects do produce limited distribution paper reports that end up in just a few of the thousands of state and federal agency offices and university libraries.” Compounding this problem, there is no reliable way to discover the existence of reports relevant to a particular research topic and the reports are frequently difficult to use and expensive to obtain.

The situation with the supporting data is far worse. Even in the unusual case that the supporting data (notes, drawings, photos etc.) exists in a public repository, they are even harder to find and are rarely adequately documented or maintained. Adam Brin, Center for Digital Antiquity director of technology and a co-principal investigator on the new grant, adds: “we want to make sure that these unpublished reports and the almost-never published supporting data and analyses are easily discoverable and widely accessible now and in 100 years. We have designed and built tDAR to ensure this.”

tDAR has been in full operation for about a year and is growing rapidly with thousands of documents, data sets and images, including 3-D scans of artifacts.

“By providing Web-based discovery and access of reports, images and well-documented data sets, tDAR enables archaeological syntheses that could never have been done before. tDAR’s cutting-edge data integration tools allow researchers to analyze data across projects that span large areas and long time intervals yielding new knowledge about the past,” Kintigh said.

Organizations that currently use tDAR as a digital repository include the Phoenix Area office of the Bureau of Reclamation, the Midwest Archeological Center of the National Park Service, the Mimbres Foundation and the North Atlantic Biocultural Organization.

“We have archaeological information from across the United States, from the Arctic to the Southwest, and from the West coast to New England. Documents, data sets and images from places like Cape Cod, coastal Georgia, the California desert, the Great Lakes region and New York City, as well as from right here in Phoenix and Tucson, can be found in tDAR,” McManamon said.

“We believe that digital copies of reports, along with the photographs, data sets and the other digital data from each project should be deposited in a trusted digital repository, such as tDAR, as part of every project’s normal workflow.  This will ensure that these digital records are preserved and can be easily discovered, accessed and used by current and future scholars,” he added.

The repository is ideal for public agencies, research organizations and individual scholars who want to preserve and protect their archaeological research project records, while making them readily available for use in research, leading to new discoveries and better understanding of the past. Agencies and scholars also will find tDAR an effective and efficient means of providing appropriate access to their research results to the general public.

“We now have in tDAR the archaeological reports from many large projects that were completed decades ago,” McManamon said. “For example, the repository includes a large number of reports and detailed records from archaeological investigations in the Phoenix area that were completed in advance of the construction of the Papago Freeway, the Hohokam Expressway and the Central Arizona Project.”

Securing a grant to ensure the future of The Center for Digital Antiquity represents an important professional milestone for McManamon, who spent 32 years at the National Park Service where he served as chief archeologist and recognized the need for an archaeological information repository like tDAR.

“We have a terrific tool,” he said. “The repository has been a crucial need for many years. We are very grateful to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for its essential and steady support that is advancing scholarship and preserving irreplaceable records of human history. We’re committed to rapidly expanding our collection of information and to building tDAR’s user community while ensuring long-term digital access to the archaeological record.”

The Center is associated with ASU’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Global Institute of Sustainability, and the University Libraries.

Digital Antiquity has added three new investigation types to tDAR’s record entry page. The inclusion of the new investigation types was done in response to the requests of users and in an attempt to make the metadata more reflective of document contents.  The three new investigation types are:

Remote Sensing: Investigations that involve the use of aerial or satellite sensor technologies to detect, describe, or classify objects on Earth (e.g. LIDAR, photographic, radar, or spectral methods).  An example of this is Archeological Monitoring, Installation of Fire Suppression System, Fort Scott National Historic Site.

Geophysical Survey: Investigations that rely on ground-based instrument sensing techniques to create images and/or maps for archaeological research (e.g. magnetometry, resistivity, or ground penetrating radar). An example of this is A Geophysical Investigation of the Parade Ground at Fort Jefferson.

Heritage Management: Studies and plans related to managing or planning for the care, interpretation, preservation, or protection of archaeological resources, including collections, records, and sites.  An example of this is NPS: Ruins Stabilization in the Southwestern United States.

As always, Digital Antiquity and tDAR remain committed to the preservation and management of digital data.  We appreciate all input that will assist in making tDAR more accessible and relevant.