The Center for Digital Antiquity is incredibly excited to announce that for the first time, we have partnered with The Society for Historical 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 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, or 2018 SHA Poster or Paper

1. Search for your abstract.
2. Request access (will require a free registration) by clicking on the “submit correction, comment (requires login)" on the right-hand side of the page.
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. Click save and you are done!
6. As always, please call or email Leigh Anne at (480) 965-1593 or laellison@digitalantiquity.org with any questions along the way!

Thursday, April 19^th marks the 10-year anniversary of the first record appearing in tDAR so this week we are celebrating here in the office, and we want to bring our users and contributors along to celebrate with us.  We are pleased to introduce the new Digital Antiquity Instagram account (@digitalantiquity), and will have multiple opportunities for our followers on Twitter, Facebook, and now Instagram to participate and win prizes.

Many tDAR users may not know that the repository was born as a side project to a major data synthesis challenge.  Specifically, once someone had gone through the effort to track down and digitize data from across a region, how can these data be made more easily available to the next researcher?   Led by Keith Kintigh, Kate Spielmann, and K. Selçuk Candan, a group of 31 researchers met to develop recommendations for the discipline’s need for digital infrastructure to support synthetic research.  tDAR was born out of these recommendations.  Read more about the early history of Digital Antiquity and tDAR over on the tDAR website.

It seems appropriate then, that one of Kintigh’s other endeavors, the Coalition for Archaeological Synthesis just awarded its first awards last week during the Society for American Archaeology meetings in Washington DC.  Synthesis remains a challenge in archaeology, but tools like tDAR (and ADS, Open Context, and others) are providing the infrastructure to support this important work.  Congratulations to the team at Digital Antiquity and happy birthday tDAR!

We are gearing up for a busy week in DC at the 83^rd Annual Society for American Archaeology meetings, and we hope to see you there!  We’ll be in the exhibit hall all week ready to discuss digital preservation, access and all things tDAR.  Please stop by and bring us your questions, or just say hi.  We also will have a full schedule of workshops, presentations, posters and forums and we encourage you to attend.  You may also schedule time to sit down with one of us to go over your digital archiving questions and explore tDAR.  Please email laellison@digitalantiquity.org to schedule an appointment today!

Monday April  9^th, 2018

Digital Antiquity staff arrive in Washington DC.  If you would like to set up a meeting to discuss your digital archiving needs we are available to meet with you.

 

Tuesday April 10^th, 2018

Available for meetings

 

Wednesday April 11^th, 2018

Workshop: “Best Practices for Digital Data Management and Curation” 

Room: Madison B

Time:  1:00PM – 5:00PM

Leigh Anne Ellison and Francis P. McManamon, workshop leaders

 

Thursday April 12^th, 2018

Digital Antiquity Booth

Room: Exhibit Hall A, #800

Time: 10:00AM – 5:00PM

Forum: “Bears Ears, the Antiquities Act, and the Status of our National Monument”

Room: Marriott Salon 2

Time: 3:00PM – 5:00PM

Francis P. McManamon, discussant

 

Friday April 13^th, 2018

Digital Antiquity Booth

Room: Exhibit Hall A, #800

Time: 9:00AM – 5:00PM

Symposium: “At-Risk World Heritage and the Digital Humanities”

Paper: The Digital Archaeology Record (tDAR): An Archive for 21^st Century Digital Curation

Room: Thurgood Marshall Ballroom East

Time: 8:00AM – 11:30PM (9:15)

Francis P. McManamon and Leigh Anne Ellison

Veterans Curation Program Lab Open House

Location: 816 N St Asaph St, Alexandria, VA 22314

Time: 10:00AM – 2:00PM

 

Saturday April 14^th, 2018

Digital Antiquity Booth

Room: Exhibit Hall A, #800

Time: 9:00AM – 5:00PM

Poster Session: “Digital Archaeology: Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing, and Drones”

Room: Exhibit Hall B South, 238-i

Time: 8:00AM – 10:00AM

Rachel Fernandez and Leigh Anne Ellison

Electronic Symposium: “Futures and Challenges in Government Digital Archaeology”

Paper: “Sharing Curation Expertise and Space for Digital Archaeological Data”

Room: Delaware B

Time: 8:00AM – 10:00AM

Leigh Anne Ellison and Francis P. McManamon

Workshop: “Using tDAR: A workshop for SAA Members Benefiting from the SAA-Center for Digital Antiquity Good Digital Curation Agreement,” [Workshop Full]

Room: Madison A

Time: 9:00AM – 10:30AM

Leigh Anne Ellison, workshop leader

Forum: “In the Eyes of the Law: Contextualizing Archaeological Legislation Through Time and Space”

Room: Washington Room 5

Time: 1:00PM – 3:00PM

Francis P. McManamon, Discussant

 

Safe travels, and we look forward to seeing you in Washington, D.C. soon!

The Center for Digital Antiquity has a new Digital Curator position open and we invite qualified applicants to apply. The position of Digital Curator plays a vital role within our organization. Not limited to one specific function, we seek a well-organized, knowledgeable person who will provide curation services to clients, including drafting administrative and substantive metadata for digital files to be deposited in tDAR, recommending and carrying out redaction for confidential or sensitive data in files, assisting in the planning of digital collections within tDAR for clients, and other services.

This person will also assist in the Center for Digital Antiquity’s development, improvement and maintenance of tDAR digital repository. This will involve work on project documentation, cleaning up existing data and entering new data/documents. Digital curators are also involved in creating instructional text and web pages to improve information for tDAR users.

To learn more and to apply, visit the Arizona State University employment website. Applications will be accepted through January 24, 2018.

 

We had a busy year in 2017, tDAR continued to grow with significant contributions from a number of organizations. tDAR had one major software release, Prehistoric, which unified search across collections, resources, and data integrations, and simplified rights and permissions.

Content added to tDAR in 2017

 

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.

Popular Resources

These include the most viewed resources in tDAR.

• Mimbres Pottery Images Digital Database (MimPIDD) (11456)
• Prehistoric Irrigation in Arizona: Symposium 1988 (5385)
• Food Crisis in Prehistory: Overpopulation and the Origins of Agriculture (4175)
• Jordan’s Journey (44PG302) (3586)
• Koster Site, IL (11GE4) (3504)
• Aztec Ruin Dendro Data (3346)
• Burial Ridge, Tottenville, Staten Island, N. Y.: Archaeology at New York City’s Largest Prehistoric Cemetery (2664)
• ‘Feudalism’ in the Interlacustrine Kingdoms. In: East African Chiefs: a Study of Political Development In Some Uganda and Tanganyika Tribes (2334)
• Culture and Commitment: a Study of the Generation Gap (2289)
• Dog River Plantation (1MB161), Mobile County, Alabama. (2181)
• Standards for Data Collection from Human Skeletal Remains: Proceedings of a Seminar at the Field Museum of Natural History (2142)
• The Archaeology of Highland Chiriqui, Panama — Documents, Images, and Datasets (2071)
• Outdated: Fauna Taxon – Southwest US Ontology (3028) (1973)
• NABO Artifacts (1890)
• Eaton Site (1889)
• MACROFLORAL ANALYSIS AT SITES CA-SBA-671 AND CA-SBA-677, VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE, CALIFORNIA (1884)
• Spitalfields Project (1880)
• Outdated: Fauna Taxon Ontology – Eastern US (1853)
• Iroquoian Ceramic Data (1805)
• Recommendation for Age and Sex Diagnoses of Skeletons (1746)

Popular Downloads

These were the most downloaded files from tDAR.

• Archeological Investigations at Joshua Tree National Park, California (202)
• Exploring Iran: The Photography of Erich F. Schmidt, 1930-1940, Supplementary Material (190)
• Grand Challenges for Archaeology – Crowd Sourcing Report (150)
• Tikal Report 11: Georeferenced Map- “Ruins of Tikal” (with border) (148)
• Petroglyphs of the Picacho Mountains, South Central Arizona (142)
• A Gazetteer of Excavated Hohokam Sites on Canal System Two, Phoenix Basin, Arizona (127)
• Hohokam Population Database (123)
• An Overview and Assessment of Middle Verde Valley Archeology (122)
• A Century of Archeological Research at Mesa Verde National Park (122)
• Mimbres Pottery Database (Public) (115)
• Archaeological Excavations at Jordan’s Point: Sites 44PG151, 44PG300, 44PG302, 44PG303, 44PG315, 44PG333 (114)
• Humboldt County 1947-1948 Aerial Photo Index Table (108)
• Archeological Collections Management of the Great Island Tavern Site, Cape Cod National Seashore, Massachusetts (107)
• Archaeology of the Pueblo Grande Platform and Surrounding Features Volume 2 Features in the Central Precinct of the Pueblo Grande Community (107)
• Frank Midvale’s Investigation of the Site of La Ciudad (105)
• The Archeology of Gila Cliff Dwellings (104)
• The Excavations of Los Muertos and Neighboring Ruins in the Salt River Valley, Southern Arizona (102)
• The Importance of Plow Zone Archaeology (102)
• Tikal Report 11: Georeferenced Map- “Ruins of Tikal” (with border) (98)
• Part 3: Quiriguá Wider Periphery, Additional Illustrations and Tables (97)

The Center for Digital Antiquity staff and collaborators report a very successful year in the area of grant awards.  Last spring, Keith Kintigh (School of Human Evolution and Social Change, Arizona State University), a member of the Center for Digital Antiquity Board of Directors, and a group of co-investigators were awarded a three-year grant, “The Digital Archive of Huhugam Archaeology,“ by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Division of Preservation and Access, Humanities Collections and Reference Resources Program.   The Digital Archive of Huhugam Archaeology (DAHA) project will create a comprehensive digital library of reports on archaeological investigations of the ancient Huhugam (Hohokam). These central and southern Arizona inhabitants once tamed the Sonoran desert through sophisticated irrigation, far-flung networks of ceremonial ball courts, specialized craft production, extensive trade, and large, long-lived towns. When complete, the archive will contain copies of 1600 major archaeological reports, estimated to total roughly 400,000 pages.  The DAHA archive content is already being built in tDAR.

Drawing of Compound A, including the Great House, at Casa Grande Ruins National Monument

 

The digital archive will reside within Digital Antiquity’s tDAR(the Digital Archaeological Record) online repository that preserves and provides access to archaeological and cultural heritage data and information. The archive will provide scholars with crucial long-term data for comparative studies, indigenous communities with access to a wealth of research on ancestral populations, teachers at all levels with firsthand research texts for classroom use, and the general public with a reliable, valued resource to learn about this fascinating ancient culture.

Kintigh is the lead PI for the grant for which Digital Antiquity Executive Director, Frank McManamon is one of the co-PIs.  Digital Antiquity Director of Technology Adam Brin, Program Manager, Leigh Anne Ellison, and Lead Digital Curator, Rachel Fernandez also have substantial roles in the project. Digital Antiquity is partnering with the Amerind Museum (Director, Christine Szuter) on the project.  Other collaborators and co-PIs on the grant include ASU colleagues in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change (David Abbott and Richard Toon), ASU Libraries (Michael Simeone), and American Indian Studies (David Martinez).

Also in the spring, the National Science Foundation Archaeometry Program awarded a two-year grant to Digital Antiquity, “Advancing Synthesis, Open Access, and Reproducibility in Archaeological Research,“ Kintigh again is the lead PI and McManamon co-PI with substantial involvement by Brin, Ellison, and Fernandez at Digital Antiquity.  For this grant, Digital Antiquity is partnering with the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center and the CRM firm Brockington and Associates.  The award will enable the research team to simplify the procedures, or workflow, from data collection to deposit of useful data and information in a digital repository where they can be discovered, accessed, and used for future research, education, public outreach, and resource management.

During the summer, we learned from Michael E. Smith, our colleague at the School of Human Evolution and Social Change, that the National Science Foundation Archaeology Program was funding a two-year grant, “Documenting, Disseminating, and Archiving Data from the Teotihuacan Mapping Project,“ for which Smith is the lead PI and McManamon co-PI and Angela Huster is the post-doc for the project.  The digital data created and updated will be added to a tDAR collection for the project, now under construction, where it will be broadly accessible for future research and educational uses.

At the beginning of December, our colleague Michelle Hegmon (School of Human Evolution and Social Change,  Arizona State University) was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Digital Humanities Program.“  The award will provide support for the development of tools to enable online analysis and research of digital collections, in particular for images, the testbed for the project is the Mimbres Pottery Images Digital Database (MimPIDD) in tDAR.

This new work will build on earlier developments that have made available and accessible many of the striking images from ancient Mimbres pottery through tDAR.  Assembled by Hegmon and colleague Steven LeBlanc (Harvard, retired), MimPIDD contains over 10,000 images of Mimbres ceramic vessels, among the most spectacular and renowned prehistoric pottery in North America. The Mimbres archaeological culture, concentrated in southwest New Mexico, is particularly noted for its stunning black-on-white style bowls, which were often decorated with naturalistic designs (especially ca. A.D. 1000-1130). MimPIDD digital images illustrate the painted designs on each vessel, along with associated descriptive information about archaeological context, temporal style, and vessel form and size. For the new project Hegmon will work with Center for Digital Antiquity Director of Technology, Adam Brin, DA Executive Director, Frank McManamon, and ASU Libraries’, Mary Whelan.

 

Left image:  #10050, Style III Bowl from Swartz site (2012), Right image: #140, Style III Bowl from Deming area (2012)

At Digital Antiquity, additional grants work continued on projects begun in 2016.  Work on the dataARC project  with colleagues at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, Colleen Strawhacker (dataARC  PI), the North Atlantic Biocultural Organization, the Center for Advanced Spatial Technology, plus researchers in Iceland, Scotland, Sweden, and other parts of northern Europe and the North Atlantic.  dataARC is producing online tools and infrastructure to enable researchers from a broad range of disciplines to study the long-term human ecodynamics of the North Atlantic, including Iceland, Greenland, and the Orkney Islands. Digital Antiquity Director of Technology, Adam Brin serves as the technical lead for DataARC.

Further work also is underway on the SKOPE II (Synthesizing Knowledge of Past Environments) project. Kintigh, Kohler, and Brin are involved in the project, which provides an online resource for paleoenvironmental data and models. It enables scholars to easily discover, explore, visualize, and synthesize knowledge of environments in the recent or remote past. Through a 2016 collaborative award to Arizona State University (ASU), the University of Illinois at Urbana -Champaign (UIUC), and Washington State University (WSU), the National Science Foundation is funding the ongoing development of SKOPE (SKOPE NSF proposal page).

Congratulations to Michelle Hegmon (School of Human Evolution and Social Change,  Arizona State University) for her recently awarded grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Division of Preservation and Access, Promotion of the Humanities Program,  “From Library to Laboratory:  Developing Tools to Enhance the Use of Digital Archaeological and Other Humanities Collections.”  The award provides support for the development of tools that will allow online analysis and research of digital collections, especially those with images.  The testbed for the project is the Mimbres Pottery Images Digital Database (MimPIDD), a large collection of archaeological pottery images from the Mimbres region of the US Southwest that is contained in tDAR (the Digital Archaeological Record).

This new work will build on earlier developments that have made available and accessible many of the striking images from ancient Mimbres pottery through tDAR.  Assembled by Hegmon and colleague Steven LeBlanc (Harvard, retired), MimPIDD contains over 10,000 images of Mimbres ceramic vessels, among the most spectacular and renowned prehistoric pottery in North America. The Mimbres archaeological culture, concentrated in southwest New Mexico, is particularly noted for its stunning black-on-white style bowls, which were often decorated with naturalistic designs (especially ca. A.D. 1000-1130). MimPIDD images illustrate the painted designs on each vessel, along with associated descriptive information about archaeological context, temporal style, and vessel form and size. Numerous collections of Mimbres pottery vessels exist, scattered across many countries and dozens of museum and private collections. The dispersed nature of these collections makes it difficult to undertake comprehensive studies of Mimbres ceramics. The MimPIDD image collection and database brings together in one virtual place visual and descriptive information from many of these collections, allowing easy access to a wealth of disparate data.  The MimPIDD collection is one of the most popular in tDAR.  Tens of thousands of page views and hundreds of downloads of the public version of the database and individual images are recorded.

For the new project Hegmon will work with the Center for Digital Antiquity Director of Technology Adam Brin, DA Executive Director Frank McManamon, and ASU Libraries’ Mary Whelan.

On the 6-8 November, Arizona State University hosted the first Army Reserve Mission Resilience and Sustainability (ARMRS) conference, which included over 150 military personnel, civilians, and contractors in attendance. At the invitation of Ms. Kathleen McLaughlin, Deputy Federal Preservation Office for the US Army, Digital Antiquity (DA) staff assisted in the CRM sessions of the training, which Ms. McLaughlin taught.

Like other public agencies, the US Army Reserve is responsible for the care of archaeological and cultural heritage resources on the facilities and land that they manage. Data and information about these resources also must be managed effectively for access, use, and sharing. The DA presentation, “Access, Use/Reuse, and Preservation of Data and Information Using tDAR (the Digital Archaeological Record)” illustrates how the tDAR repository is a tool that the US Army Reserve can use to meets its responsibilities. In addition, use of tDAR by US Army Reserve CRM staff will make managing and using the data much more effective and efficient.

The overall mission of the conference sought to provide training, context, and understanding of sustainability and its importance to the Army Reserve.  ASU, being a pioneer in the field of sustainability, covered multiple subjects from infrastructure and building to reusable energy sources and the processing of wastewater.

This platform provided the ideal opportunity for the Center for Digital Antiquity (DA) to present their commitment to archaeological sustainability and reuse of nonrenewable archaeological sources.  DA’s Executive Director Frank McManamon, along with Program Manager Leigh Anne Ellison and Digital Curator Rachel Fernandez were part of the professional training and discussed with the session participants access to, reuse of, and long-term preservation for digital archaeological data and other cultural heritage resources.  tDAR, as the premier archaeological repository, would present the Army Reserve with the opportunity to preserve and protect the cultural resources that are located on bases and facilities throughout the US, which they are responsible for managing.

Many of the training attendees expressed interest in learning more about the Center for Digital Antiquity and support that tDAR could provide in the Army Reserve’s mission towards continued sustainability.