The Center for Digital Antiquity is excited to welcome Rachel Fernandez as the newest member of the Digital Antiquity team as our Digital Data Curator. Ms. Fernandez recently relocated from University of Colorado at Boulder to join our group at Arizona State University.

With an interest in landscape archaeology and GIS applications, Rachel has conducted fieldwork in several sites across the Mediterranean. In the U.S., Rachel has worked on cultural resource surveys, public assistance grants, and GIS applications for areas affected with natural disasters during her tenure with FEMA. Rachel holds a Master’s degree in Classical Archaeology from the University of Colorado Boulder and a Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology and Classics from the University of Florida.

We are excited for the experience and fresh perspective that Rachel brings to the table and cannot wait to see how her skill set will continue to advance tDAR’s mission and goals.

Guest post by Katherine Spielmann, Professor Emeritus, Arizona State University School of Evolution and Social Change 

When I decided to retire I was faced with making seven seasons of Southwestern excavation data and many, many years of analytical data available to our profession. I spent much of Fall 2015 making that happen through uploading multitudes of excel spreadsheets, associated coding keys, and reports to tDAR. I find tDAR’s functionality in being able to link coding keys to multiple datasets across projects, the ability to integrate my faunal datasets together across projects, and the possibility of future dataset integrations particularly helpful. But there are challenges that I, and perhaps many of us who began our careers relying on paper coding keys need to face while we still have memory and some marbles left. My coding keys for artifact types like lithics, ground stone, fauna, and ceramics evolved over the course of my projects and some of that evolution is documented only on the paper coding keys themselves. Was this ideal? No. A good idea? No. is it reality? Yes. Being the one who worked to upload datasets and coding keys made it possible for me to reconcile the evolving coding schemes and create the appropriately updated digital coding keys where needed. I also grappled with reconciling the multiple datasets on individual artifact types that developed from my first project in the mid-1980s at Gran Quivira when I and the profession in general were just getting a handle on database creation and management. Luckily my students and I had undertaken some of that task years before, but in one case, the black-on-white ceramics, there are two databases that cannot be reconciled (both will go into tDAR with accompanying explanation), and a review of the original collections will be required. If the Western Archeological and Conservation Center makes them available, that would be useful to do.

So my point is to start now on making your past and present part of archaeology’s future while you still have the files and resources at hand and given the ready availability of digital archaeological repositories like tDAR. Working in the Rio Grande area of central New Mexico I’ve always regretted the lack of access to all the information that Edgar Hewett and his henchpeople pulled out of PIV Pueblo sites across the region, and what Nels Nelson found in the Galisteo Basin. They were of the early 20^th century. In the early 21^st century no discipline can thrive if masses of its data effectively disappear with the passing of each generation.

 

We had a busy year at the Center for Digital Antiquity in 2016, tDAR continued to grow with significant contributions from the North Atlantic Biocultural Organization , US Air Force, and US Army Corps of Engineers. tDAR had one major software releases, Obsidian which focused on enhancing the collections pages, searching, data integration, and added new APIs for working with data and metadata in tDAR.

We are continuing our work with the Corps of Engineers Veterans Curation Program, putting digital products based on their rehabilitation of physical archaeological collections into tDAR where it can be shared broadly.  We worked with the US Air Force cultural heritage program as program leaders there continued to build digital archaeological archives for their bases and other facilities. We are also still working with the Phoenix Area Office of the Bureau of Reclamation on their rich archives of archaeological material.

Individual researchers and research organizations began or continued to build their archives in tDAR.  A few notable contributions include those from: the Eastern Mimbres Archaeological Project (EMAP) , the ICOM Affiliated Organisation representing archaeological open-air museums, experimental archaeology, ancient technology, and interpretation (EXARC), the PaleoResearch Institute, the Center for Archaeology and Society, SRI Press, and the Dainzú-Macuilxóchitl Archaeological Project. Also notable was an extensive set of tree-ring data uploaded by Tim Kohler and Kyle Bocinsky.

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 AIA annual meetings in Orlando and San Francisco respectively. We also continue to provide SAA student members with a number of no cost uploads for contributing their data to tDAR as part of our agreement with SAA.

We continued our existing partnerships with the DataARC and SKOPE NSF awarded projects. We also developed new international partnerships for the use of tDAR by colleagues and organizations in Australia with the Federated Archaeological Information Management System (FAIMS) and in Canada with Sustainable Archaeology at the University of Western Ontario and the Museum of Ontario Archaeology.

Content added to tDAR in 2016

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)

• Mimbres Pottery Images Digital Database (MimPIDD) (8467)
• Prehistoric Irrigation in Arizona: Symposium 1988 (5329)
• Food Crisis in Prehistory: Overpopulation and the Origins of Agriculture (3404)
• Aztec Ruin Dendro Data (2820)
• Koster Site (2350)
• Jordan’s Journey (44PG302) (2207)
• Standards for Data Collection from Human Skeletal Remains (2100)
• Culture and Commitment: a Study of the Generation Gap (1687)
• Eaton Site (1529)
• Fauna Taxon Ontology – TAG (UK) (1443)
• AZ-3128 (1425)
• Outdated: Fauna Taxon – Southwest US Ontology (3028) (1406)
• The Archaeology of Highland Chiriqui, Panama — Documents, Images, and Datasets (1397)
• Fauna Taxon Ontology – Eastern US (Outdated) (1306)
• Aztec West Ruin: Perishable Artifacts and Pottery from Excavations by the American Museum of Natural History (1188)
• Iroquoian Ceramic Data (1174)
• Sapelo Island (1110)
• Bryan Site: a Prehistoric Village In Southern Minnesota (1100)
• Spitalfields Project (1078)
• Archaeological Impact Evaluation of the Proposed Stone Bridge Ranch Development, Napa County, California (1073)

Resources (most Downloaded)

• Archeological Investigations at Joshua Tree National Park, California (202)
• Exploring Iran: The Photography of Erich F. Schmidt, 1930-1940, Supplementary Material (166)
• Grand Challenges for Archaeology – Crowd Sourcing Report (142)
• Petroglyphs of the Picacho Mountains, South Central Arizona (122)
• A Gazetteer of Excavated Hohokam Sites on Canal System Two, Phoenix Basin, Arizona (118)
• Tikal Report 11: Georeferenced Map- “Ruins of Tikal” (with border) (116)
• Hohokam Population Database (112)
• A Century of Archeological Research at Mesa Verde National Park (112)
• Archaeological Excavations at Jordan’s Point: Sites 44PG151, 44PG300, 44PG302, 44PG303, 44PG315, 44PG333 (102)
• An Overview and Assessment of Middle Verde Valley Archeology (100)
• The Archeology of Gila Cliff Dwellings (97)
• Frank Midvale’s Investigation of the Site of La Ciudad (97)
• Mimbres Pottery Database (Public) (95)
• Part 3: Quiriguá Wider Periphery, Additional Illustrations and Tables (95)
• Archaeology of the Pueblo Grande Platform and Surrounding Features Volume 2 Features in the Central Precinct of the Pueblo Grande Community (95)
• Humboldt County 1947-1948 Aerial Photo Index Table (91)
• The Operation and Evolution of an Irrigation System: The East Papago Canal Study (89)
• Death, Society and Ideology in a Hohokam Community: Colonial and Sedentary Period Burials from La Ciudad (88)
• The 1982-1984 Excavations at Las Colinas: Material Culture (87)
• The Importance of Plow Zone Archaeology (87)

EXARC, the ICOM Affiliated Organisation representing archaeological open-air museums, experimental archaeology, ancient technology, and interpretation,  migrated it’s bibliographic database into the EXARC Experimental Archaeology Data Collection in tDAR this month, with technical support from the Center for Digital Antiquity. Now, in addition to providing an extensive bibliography for those interested in experimental and experiential archaeology, primitive technology and archaeological open-air museums, EXARC will be able to make publications and supplementary data (images, fieldnotes, large datasets) available, where possible; and preserve the files for the long-term. It will also make the bibliographic citations available to a wider audience by including them with other archaeological resources.

The bibliography was originally compiled by EXARC Director, Dr Roeland Paardekooper. The new collection will be managed by Dr Jodi Reeves Eyre.

In the future, EXARC plans to extend the collection and work with with universities and museums to upload their experimental archaeology data, publications and grey literature into the collection. The long term goal is to establish a board of professionals to oversee the collection, evaluate the quality of submissions and promote the preservation of and access to the wealth of data produced. If you or your institution are interested in contributing materials, or you want to learn more about supporting the collection, please contact Reeves Eyre.

 

This post was written by guest author: Sarah Neusius, Department of Anthropology, Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP)

My main project this summer is working with other zooarchaeologists who are part of the Eastern Archaic Faunal Working Group (EAFWG). With funding from the National Science Foundation (BCS1430754), we are preserving and integrating more than 50 Archaic Period (ca. 10,000 – 3,000 BP) faunal datasets and associated documents in tDAR (the Digital Archaeological Record).

Once the EAFWG has completed the uploading of the dataset files and created the metadata for them, these datasets will be publicly accessible for students and other researchers in the EAFWG collection within tDAR. These datasets were generated over the last sixty or more years by archaeologists working on sites located in the interior parts of Eastern North America. Because of a strong interest among archaeologists in human-environment interactions during the Archaic period the recovery and analysis of animal bones and other remains is a standard excavation procedure. This tradition of emphasizing zooarchaeological analysis continues today among Midwestern and Southeastern archaeologists interested in all of the PreColumbian periods. Good preservation has meant that large amounts of animal bone as well as mussel and snail shell often are recovered and significant faunal datasets have been generated for this region. Some of the better known of these sites are emblematic of the Eastern Archaic including Modoc Rock Shelter and the Koster site in Illinois, the Green River shell middens, such as Carlston Annis in Kentucky, and Dust Cave in Northern Alabama, but there are many other Archaic sites as well. Some of these datasets were recorded exclusively on paper, and some of the earliest digital faunal datasets were also created as a result of these excavations. Moreover archaeologists in this region continue to generate significant faunal data today. Unfortunately, these data have remained dispersed across a wide variety of institutions and are inaccessible to the larger archaeological community because they were recorded in a variety of formats and curated by individual researchers, some of whom are now deceased or no longer actively involved in Archaic period scholarship.

The EAFWG includes zooarchaeologists from IUP, the Illinois State Museum, the University of Kentucky, Florida State University, the Illinois Archaeological Survey, State University of New York at Oneonta and the University of Michigan at Flint.  Besides meeting at professional conferences and staying in touch through email and conference calls, we have held formal workshops related to the project.

Our goal is to use tDAR to make accessible, as well as to preserve, significant Archaic period faunal datasets. Specifically, we want to spur comparative studies between and among the datasets from different sites in order to enhance and expand research into the Archaic period in Eastern North America. Traditional explanations for Archaic period variability and change have regarded environment and demography as causal.  Unsurprisingly, such explanations are questioned by contemporary researchers, who argue that cultural identities, sociopolitical interactions, and ritual practices also explain some Archaic phenomena. In essence today’s archaeologists seek to understand Archaic period hunter-gatherers as more than participants in the ecosystem, and this raises new questions about the way Archaic data has been interpreted over the last half century or more. We think zooarchaeological data has much to contribute to these debates. Ultimately we have some macrolevel questions about the variable use of aquatic resources by people who lived in this area during the Archaic period, which we believe will contribute meaningfully to better understanding of the Archaic period. Work on these topics by members of the EAFWG continues.

Over the past year and through this summer I have been involved with myriad details, most of which would be far too boring for a blog such as this. However, I hope you can see why there are many steps in the EAFWG project. These have been accomplished with the help of several IUP undergraduate students and graduate students, and have included: (1) creating digital databases from paper records in the first place; (2) finding and removing errors from digital datasets; (3) uploading digital datasets to tDAR;  (4) providing metadata about what is in each dataset and what variables it contains; and, (5) creating the means of comparing datasets using  tDAR ontologies.

We are exploring how comparable our Archaic datasets are in terms of taphonomy and contexts sampled, and working on measuring environmental and demographic variation during the Archaic period. By the end of the summer, we hope to begin to consider our research questions concerning the use of aquatic animals more directly.

For me personally, this summer project has provided few chances to be outside as much as I would prefer or to develop the muscles and fieldwork tan that I often do. Regardless, the Archaic period was my first love in North American Archaeology. This project is an opportunity to revisit my dissertation research on the Koster site, which is pretty enjoyable and exciting for me. Both collaboration with other zooarchaeologists, and looking at data I know well with new perspectives is a lot of fun. So if you encounter me this summer and find me slightly glassy eyed from staring at the computer screen, rest assured that I’m still absorbed in archaeology!

This post was written by guest author Kyle Bocinsky.

A database of 32,863 tree-ring dates from across the southwestern United States—the largest and most comprehensive of its kind to date—is now available through tDAR. To build the database, we started with a smaller database gathered by Mike Berry and the Dominguez Anthropological Research Group and added several thousand dates from archaeological projects across the Southwest. All dates were determined by the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research (LTRR) at the University of Arizona. We also used the state site databases for the Four Corners states—Compass (Colorado), NMCRIS/ARMS (New Mexico), Utah Division of State History, and AZSITE (Arizona)—to assign site locations (UTMs) to each tree-ring date.

In an associated research publication—Exploration and exploitation in the macrohistory of the pre-Hispanic Pueblo Southwest (Bocinsky et al. 2016)—my colleagues Tim Kohler, Keith Kintigh, Johnathan Rush, and I analyzed these data for macroscalar patterns, and noted a four-peaked pattern in the number of tree-ring dates through time first established by Mike Berry in the 1980s. These four peaks correspond closely to the widely recognized Pecos classification of Ancestral Pueblo cultural phases. We then compared the tree-ring date distribution to a high-resolution reconstruction of the direct-precipitation maize farming niche across the Southwest from AD 500–1400. We argue that each of the Pecos periods initially incorporates an “exploration” phase, followed by a phase of “exploitation” of niches that are simultaneously ecological, cultural, and organizational. Exploitation phases characterized by demographic expansion and aggregation ended with climatically driven downturns in agricultural favorability, undermining important bases for social consensus. Exploration phases were times of socio-ecological niche discovery and development.

In the research paper, we only use the tree-ring dates from AD 500–1400 (29,311 dates), but we include the comprehensive database in tDAR. We’ve posted two versions of the database: one without site locations that is available to any registered tDAR user, and another available only to those who request permission from Tim Kohler or myself. The database contains site numbers and site names, lab (LTRR) numbers, references where available, the outer date (AD), the outer symbol, and the confidence level. To obtain access to the confidential version with site locations, you must demonstrate that you have permission from the managers of the statewide site files in the four states: Compass (Colorado), NMCRIS/ARMS (New Mexico), Utah Division of State History, and AZSITE (Arizona).

We hope that people find this database useful, and we intend for it to be expanded in the future!

 

REFERENCES

Bocinsky, R. Kyle, Johnathan Rush, Keith W. Kintigh, Timothy A. Kohler, Exploration and exploitation in the macrohistory of the pre-Hispanic Pueblo Southwest, Science Advances 2, e1501532 (2016).

Berry, Michael S., Time, Space, and Transition in Anasazi Prehistory (University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1982).

Once again 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 with a link to edit the abstract and upload the record.
4. Scroll down and edit or enhance any of the metdata you would like.  Click on the green "add files" button under "Attach Document Files" and follow the prompt to upload a PDF copy of your paper or poster.  If you'd like to upload a dataset in addition to your paper or presentation, please contact us for a voucher. 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 2015 (San Francisco) 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!

And SAA Student Members don't forget that you are eligible to upload 3 files to tDAR annually as part of your membership benefits!  Email membership@saa.org to receive your voucher.

Learn more about tDAR and the Center for Digital Antiquity.

Wednesday April 6^th, 2016

Student Welcome Reception, Hosted by SAA Board of Directors and Student Affairs Committee, Co-sponsored by the Center for Digital Antiquity
9:00-10:30 PM – Northern Hemisphere E1-E4

Thursday April 7^th, 2016

Poster Session: “Methodologies for Integrating Eastern Archaic Faunal Databases Using the Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR)”
8:00-10:00 AM – Atlantic Hall B
Adam Brin and Leigh Anne Ellison – “Beyond Archiving: Synthesizing Data with tDAR,” Location 9-a

Symposium: “Public Engagement and Education: Developing Heritage Stewardship”
8:00-10:00 AM – Oceanic 3
Jodi Reeves Flores and Leigh Anne Ellison – “Heritage Stewardship in the Digital Age,” 9:30AM

Poster Session: “Heritage Values in Contemporary Society,” Sponsored by the SAA Poster Submission Task Force

8:00-10:00 AM – Atlantic Hall B
Francis McManamon and Jodi Flores – “Heritage in the Digital Age: Guidelines for Preserving and Sharing Heritage with Digital Techniques,”

Saturday April 9^th, 2016

Forum: “For the Record: Archaeological Archives in the 21^st Century,” Sponsored by Committee for Museums, Collections, and Curation
8:00-10:00 AM – Oceanic 4
Francis McManamon, Discussant

Symposium: What Do We Mean by “Digital Curation?”
1:00-4:00 PM – Asia 4

Leigh Anne Ellison and Adam Brin – “tDAR (the Digital Archaeological Record): A Domain Repository for Archaeology, 1:30PM

Colleen Strawhacker, Thomas McGovern, Emily Lethbridge, Gisli Palsson and Adam Brin – “Linking Transdisciplinary Data to Study the Long-Term Human Ecodynamics of the North Atlantic: The cyberNABO Project,” 2:00PM

Kyle Bocinsky and Adam Brin – SKOPE: Bringing Continent-scale, Local Paleoenvironmental Data to Researchers and the Public, 3:45PM

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are a few funding opportunities with deadlines this spring that we’d like to share with you.

Cultural Resource Fund Phase II Grants, Due February 15th

The Federal Communications Commission and seven Class I freight rail have created the Cultural Resource Fund to support Tribal and State cultural and historic preservation projects.  You must be among the eligible tribes or States to apply (see here for eligibility).   Fifty competitive grants of up to $50,000 are available during the Phase II funding cycle.  Phase III funding will be announced later this spring.

Council on Library and Information Resources Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives, Initial Proposals Due April 4th

CLIR Hidden Collections grants are designed to fund programs that digitize and provide access to non-digital collections of rare or unique content in cultural heritage institutions.  Funding for projects ranges from $50,000-$500,000 (and the maximum depends on whether you apply as a single institution or as part of a collaborative project).

The National Historical Publications and Records Commission Access to Historical Records, Draft Due April 4th  

The National Historical Publications and Records Commission of the National Archives seeks proposals that promote the preservation and use of historical records collections to broaden understanding of our democracy, history, and culture. This grant program is designed to support archival repositories in preserving and processing primary source materials. The program emphasizes the creation of online tools that facilitate the public discovery of historical records.  Grant funding is available for up to 14 projects of up to $200,000.

If you or your organization is interested in partnering with Digital Antiquity or including tDAR in your proposal please get in touch with us.  We are available to assist with budget development and are interested in potential collaborative projects related to digital preservation of archaeological information.  Please contact us at info@digitalantiquity.org to discuss your project today!