Workshop Dates: November 19- 23, 2018

Location: University of Ghana, Department of Archaeology and Heritage Studies

Participants: University of Ghana, Dept. of Archaeology and Heritage Studies Faculty and Students, Ghana Museum and Monuments Board Staff, University of Ghana, Institute of African Studies

Workshop Instructors: Ann Stahl, University of Victoria, Dept. of Anthropology, Lisa Goddard, University of Victoria Libraries, Rachel Fernandez, Center for Digital Antiquity

Recently, our Senior Digital Curator, Rachel Fernandez, along with Ann Stahl and Lisa Goddard from the University of Victoria, had the opportunity to lead a week-long workshop at the University of Ghana in Accra. This workshop is part of a larger Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada Partnership Development grant titled, “Improving African Future Using Lessons from the Past” (IAfF). Partners on this grant include the University of Victoria, the University of Ghana, Ghana Museums and Monuments Board, Center for Digital Antiquity, and the Banda Traditional Council. The grant focuses on creating digital heritage collections that are not only relevant to scholars but to local communities and the broader public, with the idea of fostering digital heritage “communities of practice.”

At the kickoff workshop for the grant, a great group of 30 students, faculty, and staff participated in a series of lectures and hands-on activities throughout the week that touched upon topics such as best practices for digital data management and converting slides into digitized files.

By the end of the intensive week, the group had the chance to digitize documents, sort and digitize color slides, take photos and videos with audio, organize documents and add important metadata, and lastly, make draft digital data management plans to help them organize their own projects.  

Rachel was able to not only talk about the curation and planning activities that the Center for Digital Antiquity is able to provide, but also learned  about the challenges and innovative projects that are happening in Ghana. This partnership and workshop is a great example of how the archaeological community can come together with broader local and national communities to provide greater accessibility and increase preservation of valuable cultural heritage resources. We look forward to continuing working on this project and assisting in the workshops to come.

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This past fall, Digital Antiquity had the opportunity to work with a new student intern, Lauren Tennison. As part of her internship, Lauren helped with adding content to tDAR for the Digital Archive of Huhugam project as well as learning skills in curation and redaction of archaeological reports. We are so happy to have had Lauren on board!

Name: Lauren Tennison

Position/Title: Digital Curation Intern

Degree: Currently pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in anthropology with a concentration in archaeology at Arizona State University.

Previous Work Experience/Research Focus: I excavated, surveyed, and did research at a Colonial era fur trading site in Alberta, Canada.  I also excavated and surveyed at a few Hohokam sites in Phoenix, Arizona.

Favorite Places to Travel to: My grandmothers in Cottonwood, Arizona and anywhere new.

Fun fact: I graduated with an Associate of Science degree from Weatherford College, Weatherford, Texas.  Then, I transferred to Arizona State to get my Bachelors of Business in Global Logistics Management.  After a few semesters of that I realized where my real passions were and changed majors.

Favorite Collection: I’ve really enjoyed working on DAHA, the Digital Archive of Hohokam Archaeology. I love seeing how widespread their empire was. 

The Center for Digital Antiquity is currently seeking an Administrative Specialist and we invite all qualified applicants to apply. This position plays a vital role within our organization. We are seeking applicants who are motivated, self-directed, and shows professionalism in working directly with the Executive and Associate Directors on administrative matters related to general operations, financial resources management, client relations, and project coordination.

To learn more and to apply, visit the Arizona State University employment website. Application deadline is October 22, 2018 at 3:00pm (MST).

Wider use of tDAR (the Digital Archaeological Record) would be a valuable contribution to streamlining the Section 106 and other environmental review procedures at both the beginning of the process and at the end (McManamon et al. 2017). Let’s first consider how including a search of tDAR’s digital content at the beginning of Section 106 or NEPA reviews could help. Discussions and presentations at the September 2018 annual ACRA (American Cultural Resource Association) conference last month in Cincinnati emphasized the imperative of identifying the location of known historic properties early in the review. Agencies or developers who are considering undertakings need to have information about where known historic properties are located. One such source of this information is the SHPO (State Historic Preservation Office) statewide historic property inventory maintained by each state, which must be searched as part of the planning for any such undertaking.

SHPO historic property inventory records typically contain basic geographic and limited descriptive information, for example, name of the property, property type, ownership, category of significance, etc. However, in most cases, the SHPO inventory records are not substantially updated or expanded. These records do not provide the much more detailed descriptive, analytical, and evaluative information or links or easy access to existing data from more detailed studies of the historic properties.

Some SHPOs have accessible inventories of reports submitted as part of earlier Section 106 reviews. While some inventories may also include links between the reports of past investigations and the historic property inventory, many do not. In addition, most SHPOs limit access to and/or charge for use of their digital files, both the historic property inventory records and their reports of investigations libraries, so providing wider access is a challenge administratively and technically.

In her presentation at the ACRA conference, Marion Werkheiser made the point that easier access to and broader use of the “treasure trove” of additional information from past investigations would be beneficial for speeding up archaeological, environmental, and historic preservation reviews. The fuller contextual, descriptive, and interpretive information provided by these materials substantially enhance the typically sparse records contained in the SHPO inventories. The full extent of the data treasure trove is not known, but recent compilations (Altschul 2016:68-71; Departmental Consulting Archaeologist 2009: 41-44, 2010: 50-56) indicate that it encompasses millions of reports, images, data sets, and other kinds of files, some paper, but many already in digital formats. It is a terrible waste of (mostly) public funds and the results of much human endeavor not to make better use of this trove of existing data.

Content in tDAR includes these more detailed data, primarily in technical reports of investigations, but also in images, data sets, and other files deposited in tDAR. Much of this contextual and other substantive information derives from prior Section 106 or Section 110 or NEPA investigations. If a streamlined Section 106 process included a search of tDAR, the results would enable project proponents and their cultural resource management (CRM) consultants or staffs to obtain a fuller view of what work already had been done in potential impact areas and relative easy access to the results of these prior studies. In most cases, this detailed information is needed as part of the Section 106 review, which, in addition to simply identifying where historic properties are located, must assess their significance and value(s), determine if they will be impacted by the undertaking, and suggest how adverse impacts anticipated by the undertaking can be mitigated.

Digital searching of tDAR content is possible using geographic terms, key words, text strings, individual or groups of terms, and other means. In a streamlined review process, such searches would supplement what can be learned from basic SHPO historic property inventories. The tDAR metadata records, which are available for all files deposited in tDAR, are publicly accessible. Search of these digital records would not require any coding for special access. Access to the digital files themselves can be controlled with additional review of requests for access required (more on this process below).

A second way that using tDAR can improve and streamline review procedure is at the end of the investigation process. Data created by any Section 106 or environmental review-related investigation should be deposited in tDAR as part of the project itself, analogous to the mandatory deposit of physical collections and paper records in a qualified curatorial repository at the end of a project. As is clear from the detailed legal analysis by Cultural Heritage Partners (2012), the requirement for up-to-date digital data curation exists in 36 CFR 79, the National Archives and Records Administration regulations, and the statutes from which these regulation derive.

Depositing data in tDAR as part of a project is easily accomplished administratively by including in all investigation scopes of work the requirement that the CRM or environmental consulting firm carrying out the work upload to tDAR and complete the metadata records for the digital products (mainly documents, images, data sets) of their investigation. A number of examples are summarized below. By including this activity as part of the CRM contract, the new data becomes immediately available for use by and for new projects. With these data deposits, the information treasure trove grows with the completion of each current CRM investigation.

Concern is often raised about access to certain kinds of archaeological data, for example, very specific information about the location of in situ resources that may be in some documents, forms, data sets, etc. Data deposited in tDAR can be marked as “confidential” at the time they are uploaded. This designation requires that others who wish to see or download the confidential files must contact the individual or organization that authorized the deposit of the files and be given access to the files by the depositor. This provides for an extra level of protection for confidential data deposited in tDAR. It also is possible for those who deposit data in tDAR to create, using readily available commercial software, “redacted” versions of documents or other files from which confidential data are removed. These redacted versions can be deposited and made available in tDAR to registered tDAR users who have agreed formally to give credit to the data creator(s) if the data are used for subsequent research and not to take any actions that would endanger the resources to which the data relate. Several agencies and firms that have created digital archives in tDAR to manage their digital archaeology and cultural heritage data. These tDAR users create redacted versions, as well as, deposit confidential full versions of their data. This approach enables them to control access to the confidential data, but also provides wider and easier public and professional access to data that is not confidential.

SHPOs, of course, will want and should have copies of reports and related material in their own offices where they can make use of them. A strategy for long-term digital data preservation envisions many copies of the data being preserved and available for reuse in multiple repositories. It is not a problem if data are cared for in more than a single repository. A growing number of examples exist of public agencies (national, state, local, and, soon we hope, tribal programs) depositing data in tDAR where they can use the data more effectively and efficiently and manage access. Below are several recent examples.

Phoenix Area Office (PXAO), Bureau of Reclamation:

This extensive archive, set up in 2011 is the first digital archive collection in tDAR. It is used actively by PXAO CRM staff to manage their data (Digital Antiquity 2013). Currently the archive includes 11 datasets, 371 documents, 5 GIS datasets, 56 images, and 103 projects. Growth continues both through the addition of legacy data and through the inclusion of data from recent or current projects. In terms of the resources in this tDAR collection being discoverable, accessible, and used, in 2017 and 2018, resources in the collection have been viewed over 57,180 times and files downloaded 5,534 times.

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SWCA (a CRM firm based in Colorado):

The firm deposited data from a recent project, the Sigurd to Red Butte No. 2 transmission line in UT. This project archive includes 12 data sets and 10 documents (reports, artifact data sets and site inventory forms). The site inventory forms are marked in tDAR as confidential and have access controlled by SWCA and the BLM. The physical collections are curated at the Natural History Museum of Utah. The project digital data were deposited as the final part of a project overseen by BLM and funded by a private energy company. The files and metadata records were uploaded to tDAR by SWCA as a project deliverable. Throughout this project, 81 sites were investigated in some combination of Phase I testing, Phase II excavation, and/or Level II historical documentation. The CRM firm that undertook this project, SWCA, was requested to take on the project in May of 2015. The project data was deposited in tDAR in June, 2017. That is a quick “turn-around” time from project start to project data being made available. In this case it was possible by using tDAR as the data repository where other potential users can discover, access, and make use of the data.

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Dovetail Research Group (a CRM firm based in North Carolina):

The firm deposited as part of their project completion the data from excavations of the Armstrong-Rogers Site (7NC-F-135) (Hatch et al. 2017). The excavation is part of a larger archaeological program for developments of the U.S. Route 301 Corridor, New Castle County, Delaware. This project archive consists of 3 datasets and 2 documents, Phase III investigations. The project is part of the Delaware Department of Transportation (DelDoT) Digital Archive in tDAR, which is described in the next bullet.

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DelDoT Digital Archive, Delaware Dept. of Transportation:

So far data from five recent major archaeological projects done as part of the Route 301 project. At present, the archive includes 15 data sets, 6 reports, and 30 sets of images. These data are organized under five projects carried out by different CRM firms as part of the overall impact mitigation program for the highway project.

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Far Western Anthropological Research Group, Inc. (a CRM firm based in California):

Far Western deposited data for two recent projects on behalf of their client, the Bureau of Reclamation Lower Colorado River office. Archaeological Inventory of 1,927 Acres Atop and Adjacent to Mormon Mesa, Clark County, Nevada (2018) and Class III Cultural Resources Inventory of 1,555 Acres East of the Virgin River, Clark County, Nevada (2018). For this project, the fieldwork was completed in January 2018 and the documents and data sets were uploaded and made available in July 2018.

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Managing or curating data is an important, albeit, frequently overlooked part of any research project no matter what the subject area or reason behind the study. Good management of digital data requires that they be broadly and easily discovered, accessed, understandable for reuse, and preserved for future uses. The desire among data users for greater transparency and access is widespread among both the scientific and humanities disciplines and with policy makers. This is particularly true for data that have been produced at public expense, e.g., through funding agencies such as EPA, NSF, NEH, NIH, and USGS. The demand for greater access to sponsored project research data is focused on issues such as what data are saved by such publicly funded or required projects; where and how can such data be discovered and accessed; and, what metadata are curated with these data files that make them usable. The recent research about how data are managed by York, Gutmann, and Berman (2018) describes some of the challenges in this area. Depositing data in tDAR as part of the completion of investigations is one way to ensure that project results do not broaden an already existing data stewardship gap in archaeology, historic preservation, and heritage studies.

References Cited

Altschul, Jeffery H. (2016) The Role of Synthesis in American Archaeology and Cultural Resource Management as Seen through an Arizona Lens. Journal of Arizona Archaeology 4(1):68–81. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/advances-in-archaeological-practice/article/fostering-collaborative-synthetic-research-in-archaeology/1F03A37B00427EB753898EA5AE8D3861, accessed 4 October 2018.

Cultural Heritage Partners, PLLC (2012) Federal Laws and Regulations Requiring Curation of Digital Archaeological Documents and Data. https://www.digitalantiquity.org/wp-uploads/2013/05/2013-CHP-Legal-Analysis-of-Fed-Req-for-Curation-of-Dig-Arch-Docs-Data-.pdf, accessed 4 October 2018.

Departmental Consulting Archeologist (2009) The Goals and Accomplishments of the Federal Archeology Program: The Secretary of the Interior’s Report to Congress on the Federal Archeology Program, 1998-2003. Archaeology Program, National Park Service, Department of the Interior, Washington, DC. doi:10.6067/XCV81N7ZR4, accessed November 30, 2016.

Departmental Consulting Archeologist (2010) The Secretary of the Interior’s Report to Congress on the Federal Archeology Program, 2004-2007. Archaeology Program, National Park Service, Department of the Interior, Washington, DC. doi:10.6067/XCV8Q81DZV, accessed November 30, 2016

Digital Antiquity (2013) Case Study: Using tDAR to Manage Legacy and New Archaeological Documents and Data, the Phoenix Area Office of the Bureau of Reclamation. https://www.digitalantiquity.org/wp-uploads/2011/07/Using-tDAR-to-Manage-Legacy-and-New-Archaeological-Documents-and-Data-the-Phoenix-Area-Office-of-the-Bureau-of-Reclamation-.pdf, accessed 4 October 2018 .

Hatch, Brad, Danae Peckler, Joseph Blondino, Kerry S. Gonzalez, Emily Calhoun, Kerri S. Barile (2017) Archaeological Data Recovery at the Armstrong-Rogers Site(7NC-F-135) New Castle County, Delaware. D. (tDAR id: 446689); doi:10.6067/XCV8ZC85SX. https://core.tdar.org/document/446689/archaeological-data-recovery-at-the-armstrong-rogers-site7nc-f-135-new-castle-county-delaware, accessed 4 October 2018.

McManamon, Francis P., Keith W. Kintigh, Leigh Anne Ellison, and Adam Brin (2017) tDAR: A Cultural Heritage Archive for Twenty-First-Century Public Outreach, Research, and Resource Management. Advances in Archaeological Practice 5(3):238-249. https://repository.asu.edu/attachments/189868/content/tdar.pdf, accessed 4 October 2018.

York, Jeremy, Myron Gutmann, and Francine Berman (2018) What do we know about the stewardship gap? Data Science Journal 17:1-17. https://datascience.codata.org/articles/10.5334/dsj-2018-019/, accessed 4 October 2018.

Digital Antiquity Executive Director and Research Professor Frank McManamon organized and chaired a panel of US archaeologists as part of a data science workshop in Belgrade, Serbia, 26-28 August.  The “US-Serbia & West Balkan Data Science Workshop,” was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Serbian Ministry of Science, Education, and Technological Development, the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences, the University of Belgrade, and the U. S. Embassy. Organized and chaired by Professor Zoran Obradovic, L. H. Carnell Professor of Data Analytics and Professor, Statistical Science Department, Fox School of Business, Temple University and Aleksandra Drecun, President of Intersections, Center for Science and Innovation, Serbia, the workshop combined panels on data science foundations, mathematical research, big data critical infrastructure, bio-medical informatics, and archaeological research. Paired panels from the US and Serbia and the West Balkans addressed data science issues and themes as they are relevant for each of their professions.  

The US archaeology panel members and the subjects of their presentations, included:

Frank McManamon, Executive Director of the Center for Digital Antiquity and Research Professor, School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University (Organizer and Chair); 

Ben Marwick, Associate Professor in the Anthropology Department, University Washington, and Senior Research Scientist at the Center for Archaeology, University of Wollongong, Australia,  “Archaeological Science, Archaeology of Science, and Tools for Closing the Gap between Practice and Ideals;” 

Tim Kohler, Regents Professor, Anthropology, Washington State University, “More Data and More Computation but not Necessarily Less Theory: Assessing the Status and Near-Future Directions of Archaeology;”

Carrie Heitman, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Faculty Fellow in the Center for Digital Research in Humanities, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, “Evidential Reasoning in Archaeological Science and the Need for Humanistic Approaches to Big Data;” and, 

Adam Rabinowitz, Assistant Director of the Institute of Classical Archaeology and Associate Professor, Department of Classics, The University Texas at Austin, “Grand Challenges, Big Data, Fuzzy Data, and Digital Archaeology: integrating information about the past into the Planet Texas 2050 DataX platform.”

Overall, the workshop explored how the US data science community can cooperate with and benefit from collaborations with partners in Serbia and the West Balkan region. The scope includes fundamental data science methods and high-impact applications related to big data processing, data science applications in critical infrastructures, biomedical informatics, and digital archaeology.

The workshop facilitated closing the gap between data science research in the US and Serbia and the region. US data scientists in various fields mixed with Serbian and Western Balkan researchers from disciplines that until recently had little exposure to data science methods, potentially enabling collaborative breakthroughs in those scientific fields. 

In addition to the formal workshop sessions, the US archaeologists had a number of side meetings with colleagues in the Serbian Institute of Archaeology.  In addition to the exchange of information about how research, theory, and methods and techniques  in the fields represented are being integrated with data science, the workshop had the goal of establishing collaborations between Serbian and West Balkan scientists and US colleagues. There appear to be a number of possible collaborations among the archaeologists.

An ASU Connection

US Ambassador to Serbia, Kyle R. Scott (BA ASU 1979; Thunderbird School of Global Management, 1980) made remarks during a workshop panel during the first day.  Scott made the important comment, noting that available data these days is not simply “big,” it is “huge.”  He pointed out that in order to make good use of these data, they need to be effectively managed. 

McManamon, in his remarks on another panel later in the workshop, picked up on Scott’s comments. He noted that few presentations during the workshop had addressed or even mentioned issues of managing the vast amount of digital data that was utilized in the data analyses that were the focus of many presentations.  Good management of digital data requires that they be broadly and easily discovered, accessed, understandable for reuse, and preserved for future uses. The desire among data users for greater transparency and access is widespread among both scientific and humanities disciplines and with policy makers. This is particularly true for data that have been produced at public expense, e.g., through funding agencies such as EPA, NSF, NEH, NIH, and USGS.  The demand for greater access to sponsored project research data is focused on issues such as what data are saved by such publicly funded or required projects; where and how can such data be discovered and accessed; and, what metadata are curated with these data files that make them usable. The recent research about how data are managed by York, Gutmann, and Berman (“What do we know about the stewardship gap?” Data Science Journal 17:1-17. Doi: http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2018-019) describes some of the challenges in this area, which McManamon summarized briefly in his remarks at the workshop.

In 2017, Arizona State University’s Center for Digital Antiquity, in partnership with the Amerind Foundation, was awarded a two year National Endowment for the Humanities grant (award #PW-253799-17) to build the Digital Archive of Huhugam Archaeology (DAHA) within tDAR. As part of that effort the DAHA team developed a 16 question survey to assess the relevant information-related needs of some of DAHA’s key user communities: archaeologists and others working in cultural heritage management who are concerned with Huhugam archaeology.  The results are in and just published in the “Reports in Digital Archaeology Publication Series.” Reports in Digital Archaeology is an online publication series devoted to issues regarding research and practice in digital archiving of archaeological materials and archaeologically related data.

 

The report is described in more detail, along with more information the DAHA project in a recent blogpost.

On Saturday, July 14th, staff of the Center for Digital Antiquity (DA), the Pat Tillman Veterans Center, and the Environmental Research Group/New South Associates (ERG-NSA), along with family members, celebrated the achievements of Arizona State University (ASU) student veterans who have worked as digital curators in the Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR) Veterans Curation Program (VCP) at ASU. The veterans (Chris Frady, Herminio Meneses, Nicholas Rudolph, Tyler Sutton, and Cole van Roeder) were the first student-veterans to work in the tDAR VCP program. Their success and substantial achievements have encouraged the continuation of including student-veterans in the tDAR VCP this coming year. Also recognized at the ceremony was Katie Toye, an ERG archaeologist who participated in the tDAR VCP program in 2016.

During their time at the Center, the student veterans made huge progress in curating over 1,126 documents, 2,234 images, and 386 datasets which span over 12 USACE U.S. Army Corps of Engineers districts. Their hard work resulted in large amounts of data from the VCP-rehabilitated collections being made more widely available to the public and, furthermore, making them accessible for education, research, and modern archaeological investigations. Individually, each of the tDAR VCP team made significant contributions to the program. All of the Digital Antiquity staff are grateful for their assistance!

For more information on each of the students honored, short bios can be found below. We wish these students all the best in their future endeavors; we know they will go on to do great things! We are also thankful for the wonderful folks at ASU’s Office for Veteran and Military Academic Engagement and the Pat Tillman Veterans Center, in particular, Nancy Dallett, Steven Borden, and Michelle Loposky. They assisted us in our search for candidates for the program, publicizing the overall digital curation efforts, and they continue to provide support, not only to the student veterans working on this project, but all of the student veterans at ASU. We will soon be searching for a new group of student veterans for another digital VCP project and encourage all who are interested to apply. Stay tuned for more information!

The Veterans Curation Program (VCP) is a program developed and funded by the Mandatory Center of Expertise (MCX) for the Curation and Management of Archaeological Collections (CMAC) of the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). The VCP was created to carry out two important missions: (1) providing veterans with a path from military service to the civilian workforce; and (2) to process and archive physical archaeological collections and related data for which the USACE is responsible in order to preserve them and make them more widely available to the public. Much of the VCP work occurs in three laboratories run by New South Associates where archaeological collections that have languished in storage, some of them for decades, are rehabilitated and made useable. At the labs artifacts, samples, and other materials are cleaned, organized, and recorded.

The rehabilitation of the physical collections creates large amounts of digital data (paper records that are scanned, new digital photos of artifacts, etc.). Copies of these digital data will be kept with the physical collections, of course, but digital data also can be made much more widely available as well. Here is where the Center for Digital Antiquity and the VCP come together. Digital Antiquity, in partnership with VCP and ASU’s Pat Tillman Veterans Center, employs student veterans to digitally curate the USACE archaeological collections by adding them to tDAR, a digital archive for archaeological and cultural heritage data and information. Through the tDAR website, much of the information about the VCP-rehabilitated collections can be discovered, accessed, and used for new research, education, resource protection, public interpretation, and other appropriate uses. By making these data and related information publicly available (with appropriate limits on access to some kinds of information) the USACE is fulfilling its legal obligations under various federal statutes and regulations.

Digital VCP Awards: Award Recipient Bios

Chris Frady
Chris joined the Digital Veterans Curation project in 2016. He is a veteran of the US Air Force and served in active duty between 2006 and 2014 before joining the reserves. He was stationed in Okinawa, Japan and Washington State and was deployed to Qatar, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Uganda where he worked as an Aircraft Electrical and Environmental Craftsman. He notes his most rewarding experience during his service in Uganda was when he delivered aid to the Central African Republic and assisted in evacuation of individuals from South Sudan. At ASU Chris studied Psychology and received a Bachelor of Arts in 2016. At present he is completing a Bachelor of Applied Science in internet and web development. Chris is the developer and manager of our tracking system, which has evolved from a simple Google spreadsheet to a more robust Microsoft Excel sheet in his time here. His eye for solving workflow problems with technical solutions has been a huge asset to the team. He looks forward to a career in user interface or user experience design. We know he’ll be great!

Herminio Meneses
A California native, Herminio joined the Digital Veterans Curation project in 2016. A veteran of the United States Army, he served as an Army specialist from 2011 to 2014, where he, among other things, conducted field training exercises in map reading and land navigation skills using topographic maps and other specialized tools. These activities fostered in him a strong interest in geography and cartography. Though he had earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from California State University, Los Angeles prior to his Army service, he came to ASU in 2015 to pursue a degree in Geography with a focus on geographical information systems. As part of his work with Digital Antiquity, Herminio was a careful worker with fantastic attention to detail. He specialized in review and could be counted on to check his colleagues work before it was reviewed by a manager. At present, Herminio is employed by the US National Guard, and has been deployed to the Arizona border. He looks forward to a career where he can put his Geographic Information Systems skills to use.

Nick Rudolph
After serving 12 years (2002-2013) in the Army as a Counterintelligence Special Agent, Nick joined the Digital Antiquity team as part of the first batch of student veterans in the Digital Veterans Curation project. In the Army, Nick was stationed in various locations across the globe, including Germany, Iraq, Hawaii, Afghanistan, the Philippines, Thailand, Japan, the Horn of Africa, and all over the continental United States. His military career highlights include seeing the Ishtar Gates in Babylon and meeting interesting people from all over the world during his deployments. At ASU he earned a Bachelor of Science in Criminology in 2015 and is currently working to finish a Forensic Science degree. During his tenure in the Digital Veterans Curation project, Nick enjoyed working on the Stockton Lake and Iraq Mass Graves collections, which are now all active in tDAR. Though we were sad to see him go, Nick accepted a job offer in his desired career early this year. He currently is working at the Maricopa County Sheriff’s office, Major Crimes division, as a Criminal Intelligence Analyst. He hopes to use the skills he learned at Digital Antiquity to “continue school, teach, and continue working in Law Enforcement.” He currently uses the organizational and research skills he learned in his work investigating cold cases.

Tyler Sutton
One of the very first students to accept and begin work on the Digital Veterans Curation project, Tyler joined the DA team after having served 4 years in the Air Force as a Supply Journeyman. During this time he was stationed in New Mexico and Qatar, he notes the experience of becoming a Base Honor Guard member and receiving Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command training as particular highlights. As a student at ASU he studied Criminology and Criminal Justice and graduated in 2016. Tyler recalls his favorite project at tDAR VCP as work he completed to curate reports that form the Iraq Mass Graves collection. We appreciated Tyler’s thoroughness and detail-oriented approach to his work. In addition, he was always up for learning new tasks. His assistance on writing tasks in particular, including blog posts about the VCP project and manuals describing the VCP tasks were a real asset. Tyler left the Digital VCP at the beginning of this year and joined Digital Antiquity full time as a Digital Data Curator working on a range of curation projects. He hopes to return to school to pursue graduate work in the future.

Katie Toye
Kay joined this cohort in the fall of 2016 as an archaeological technician from ERG. Though not a veteran, Kay has a background in emergency management, and experience working on archaeological field projects throughout the American Southwest. She is working on a Master’s Degree in emergency management. Her archaeological experience was a real asset on this project. We appreciated her knowledge and familiarity with CRM documents and data, which she shared with her VCP colleagues.

Cole Von Roeder
Cole joined Digital VCP in 2018 and is our newest member of the cohort. Cole served in the US Army from 2002 to 2014 in a wide range of capacities including driver, mortar gunner, squad leader, section sergeant, platoon sergeant, and company law Non-Commissioned Officer. He was stationed in Germany, New Orleans, Texas, and Korea and deployed to Iraq. He was honorably discharged in 2014. He is currently working on Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology and History at ASU. At Digital Antiquity, Cole has quickly learned the ropes. His inquisitiveness and passion for the subject matter are his greatest assets. After he completes his BA, Cole would like to go on to pursue a PhD in Anthropology with a focus in Archaeology.

The Digital Antiquity staff is excited to highlight our newest intern, Hannah. Hannah is lending her expertise to our team this month before returning to her graduate studies at New Mexico State University next semester. Hannah is assisting with adding content to tDAR for the Digital Archive of Huhugam project, as well as creating content in tDAR for her graduate program  research. We are so happy to have Hannah on board and to provide the rest of the world with the opportunity to learn more about her!

Staff Highlight

Name: Hannah Dutton

Position/Title: Digital Curation Intern

Degree: Masters student at New Mexico State University in Anthropology and Cultural Resource Management

Previous Work Experience/Research Focus: Historical Archaeology in Spanish Colonial New Mexico and Colonial New England, Prehistoric Archaeology in Nicaragua.

Publications/Career/Education Highlights: Lab Manager at the Enfield Shaker Museum Field School, survey work on the Camino Real de Tierra Adentro with New Mexico State University, 2017 SAA Poster on “Ceramic Compositional Analysis from Chiquilistagua, Nicaragua” with Drs. Justin Lowry and Jason Paling.

Notable Personal/Professional Achievement: I helped publish literature magazines and host poetry mics all through undergrad, while studying in the Social Science Department in undergrad.

Favorite Place to Travel To: My family’s cabin in Maine; no internet, no cable, limited phone service!

Fun Fact(s): I sang at Carnegie Hall in New York City as a freshman in undergrad! I also had an American Revolution-era reenactment costume as a kid because I’ve always been a major history nerd!

 

Digital Antiquity staff will be attending this year’s AZ Historic Preservation Conference, which runs from Wednesday, June 6th to Friday, June 8th. On Friday, Digital Antiquity’s Francis P. McManamon, Leigh Anne Ellison, and Adam Brin will be presenters at the event –

Friday June 8th, 2018

Hotel Valley Ho – Scottsdale, AZ

Time: 9:50am – 10:40am

Subject: “The Digital Archive of Huhugam Archaeology”

Presenters: Leigh Anne Ellison, Francis P. McManamon, Adam Brin, David Martinez

Time: 10:50am – 11:40am

Subject: Designing and Carrying Out Digital Curation for Data Management, Research, and Sharing Programs

Presenters: Francis P. McManamon, Bill Doelle, Sharlot Hart, Teresita Majewski, Lauren Jelinek

While The Center for Digital Antiquity will not have a booth this year, please email Francis P. McManamon (fpmcmanamon@asu.edu) or Leigh Anne Ellison (laellison@digitalantiquity.org) to set up a meeting.

For the fourth year in a row, Digital Antiquity has partnered with The Society for American Archaeology to preserve the meeting abstracts and make the presentations and data used to support them available in tDAR. As a presenter you can access your record in tDAR, edit the metadata, and upload a PDF copy of your paper, presentation, poster, or other supplementary data (up to 3 files/30MB). The project is now live in tDAR. Here’s how to get started:

Find your Abstract

Enter your last name, or the title of your SAA Poster or Paper

1. Search for your abstract.
2. Request access (will require a free registration).
3. Once completed, we will send you a message within one business day with a link to edit the abstract and upload the record.
4. Scroll down and edit or enhance any of the metdata.  Click on the green "add files" button under "Attach Document Files" and follow the prompt to upload a copy of your paper, poster, or associated data .  If you are adding multiple files (e.g. your paper, a copy of your presentation, and a dataset) you will probably want to create a project.
5. You may save your work at any point along the way, but when your edits are complete, make sure to change your resource's status from "draft" to "active".
6. Click save and you are done!
7. As always, please call or email Leigh Anne at (480) 965-1593 or laellison@digitalantiquity.org with any questions along the way!

Were you a presenter in 2017 (Vancouver), 2016 (Orlando), or 2015 (San Francisco) SAA Annual Meeting but haven’t uploaded your presentation yet? Not to worry–those abstracts are also in tDAR and can be found in the search bar at the top of this page too. Help other researchers find and cite your SAA presentations by making them available today!

Additionally, the tDAR SAA Member Benefit allows retired members, student members, members from countries with discounted rates, and members from Tribal Historic Preservation Offices to upload ten files (up to 100MB) annually to tDAR. Contact membership@saa.org to request your voucher.