Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T13:51:55.916Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Digital Index of North American Archaeology: networking government data to navigate an uncertain future for the past

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 April 2018

Eric C. Kansa*
Affiliation:
Open Context, The Alexandria Archive Institute, 125 El Verano Way, San Francisco, CA 94127, USA
Sarah W. Kansa
Affiliation:
Open Context, The Alexandria Archive Institute, 125 El Verano Way, San Francisco, CA 94127, USA
Josh J. Wells
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Indiana University South Bend, 1700 Mishawaka Avenue, South Bend, IN 46634-7111, USA
Stephen J. Yerka
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Tennessee, 250 South Stadium Hall, Knoxville, TN 37996-0720, USA
Kelsey N. Myers
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Indiana University South Bend, 1700 Mishawaka Avenue, South Bend, IN 46634-7111, USA
Robert C. DeMuth
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Indiana University Bloomington, 701 E. Kirkwood Avenue, Bloomington, IN 47405-7100, USA
Thaddeus G. Bissett
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Northern Kentucky University, 217 Landrum Academic Center, Highland Heights, KY 41099, USA
David G. Anderson
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Tennessee, 250 South Stadium Hall, Knoxville, TN 37996-0720, USA
*
*Author for correspondence (Email: kansaeric@gmail.com)

Abstract

The ‘Digital Index of North American Archaeology’ (DINAA) project demonstrates how the aggregation and publication of government-held archaeological data can help to document human activity over millennia and at a continental scale. These data can provide a valuable link between specific categories of information available from publications, museum collections and online databases. Integration improves the discovery and retrieval of records of archaeological research currently held by multiple institutions within different information systems. It also aids in the preservation of those data and makes efforts to archive these research results more resilient to political turmoil. While DINAA focuses on North America, its methods have global applicability.

Type
Research
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd, 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allen, L., Claire, S. & Wright, S.. 2017. Strategic open data preservation: roles and opportunities for broader engagement by librarians and the public. College & Research Libraries News 78 (9): 482. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.5860/crln.78. 9.482.Google Scholar
Altschul, J.H. & Patterson, T.C.. 2010. Trends and employment in American archaeology, in Ashmore, W., Lippert, D. & Mills, B.J. (ed.) Voices in American archaeology: 291316: Washington, D.C.: SAA.Google Scholar
Anderson, D.G. 2018. Using CRM data for ‘big picture’ research, in McManamon, F.P. (ed.) New perspectives in cultural resource management: 197–21. Abingdon: Taylor & Francis.Google Scholar
Anderson, D.G. & Horak, V. (ed.). 1995. Archaeological site file management: a southeastern perspective. Atlanta (GA): Interagency Archeological Services Division, National Park Service, Southeast Regional Office.Google Scholar
Anderson, D.G. & Miller, D.S.. 2017. PIDBA (Paleoindian Database of the Americas): call for data. PaleoAmerica 3: 15. https://doi.org/10.1080/20555563.2016.1270154Google Scholar
Anderson, D.G. & Sassaman, K.E.. 2012. Recent developments in southeastern archaeology: from colonisation to complexity. Washington, D.C.: Society for American Archaeology.Google Scholar
Anderson, D.G., Miller, D.S., Yerka, S.J., Gillam, J.C., Johanson, E.N., Anderson, D.T., Goodyear, A.C. & Smallwood, A.M.. 2010. PIDBA (Paleoindian Database of the Americas) 2010: current status and findings. Archaeology of Eastern North America 38: 6390.Google Scholar
Anderson, D.G., Smallwood, A.M. & Miller, D.S.. 2015. Pleistocene human settlement in the southeastern United States: current evidence and future directions. PaleoAmerica 1: 751. https://doi.org/10.1179/2055556314Z.00000000012Google Scholar
Anderson, D.G., Bissett, T.G., Yerka, S.J., Wells, J.J., Kansa, E.C., Kansa, S.W., Myers, K.N., DeMuth, R.C. & White, D.A.. 2017. Sea-level rise and archaeological site destruction: an example from the southeastern United States using DINAA (Digital Index of North American Archaeology). PLoS ONE 12 (11): e0188142. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0188142Google Scholar
Arbuckle, B.S., Kansa, S.W., Kansa, E., Orton, D., Çakirlar, C., Gourichon, L., Atici, L., Galik, A., Marciniak, A., Mulville, J. & Buitenhuis, H.. 2014. Data sharing reveals complexity in the westward spread of domestic animals across Neolithic Turkey. PLoS ONE 9: e99845. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0099845Google Scholar
Baker, T. & Sutton, S.A.. 2015. Linked data and the charm of weak semantics: introduction: the strengths of weak semantics. Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 41 (4): 1012. https://doi.org/10.1002/bult.2015.1720410406Google Scholar
Binding, C., May, K. & Tudhope, D.. 2008. Semantic interoperability in archaeological datasets: data mapping and extraction via the CIDOC CRM, in International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries: 280–90. Berlin: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-87599-4_30Google Scholar
Butler, J. 2017. Reflections on Trump. Hot Spots, Cultural Anthropology. Available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20170207030502/ https://culanth.org/fieldsights/1032-reflections-on-trump (accessed 22 February 2018).Google Scholar
Cochran, P.A.L., Marshall, C.A., Garcia-Downing, C., Kendall, E., Cook, D., McCubbin, L. & Gover, R.M.S.. 2008. Indigenous ways of knowing: implications for participatory research and community. American Journal of Public Health 98: 2227. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2006.093641Google Scholar
Findlay, C. 2015. Decentralised and inviolate: the blockchain and its uses for digital archives. Recordkeeping Roundtable. Available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20170105012522/https://rkroundtable.org/2015/01/23/decentralised-and-inviolate-the-blockchain-and-its-uses-for-digital-archives/ (accessed 22 February 2018).Google Scholar
Isaksen, L., Simon, R., Barker, E.T.E. & de Soto Cañamares, P.. 2014. Pelagios and the emerging graph of ancient world data. Proceedings of the 2014 ACM conference on Web Science: 197–201. https://doi.org/10.1145/2615569.2615693Google Scholar
Jeffrey, S., Richards, J., Ciravegna, F., Waller, S., Chapman, S. & Zhang, Z.. 2009. The Archaeotools project: faceted classification and natural language processing in an archaeological context. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 367: 2507–19. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2009.0038Google Scholar
Kansa, E.C. 2012. Openness and archaeology's information ecosystem. World Archaeology 44: 498520. https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2012.737575Google Scholar
Kansa, E.C. 2015. Contextualizing digital data as scholarship in Eastern Mediterranean archaeology. CHS Research Bulletin 3 (2). Available at: http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hlnc.essay:KansaE.Contextualizing_Digital_Data_as_Scholarship.2015 (accessed 22 February 2018).Google Scholar
Kansa, E.C. & Bissell, A.. 2010. Web syndication approaches for sharing primary data in ‘small science’ domains. Data Science Journal 9: 4253. https://doi.org/10.2481/dsj.009-012Google Scholar
Kansa, E.C. & Kansa, S.W.. 2011. Towards a do-it-yourself cyberinfrastructure: open data, incentives, and reducing costs and complexities of data sharing, in Kansa, E.C., Kansa, S.W. & Watrall, E. (ed.) Archaeology 2.0: new approaches to communication and collaboration: 5791. Los Angeles (CA): Cotsen Institute of Archaeology.Google Scholar
Kansa, E.C. & Kansa, S.W.. 2013. We all know that a 14 is a sheep: data publication and professionalism in archaeological communication. Journal of Eastern Mediterranean Archaeology and Heritage Studies 1: 8897.Google Scholar
Kansa, E.C., Kansa, S.W. & Arbuckle, B.. 2014. Publishing and pushing: mixing models for communicating research data in archaeology. International Journal of Digital Curation 9: 5770. https://doi.org/10.2218/ijdc.v9i1.301Google Scholar
Kintigh, K.W. 2015. Extracting information from archaeological texts. Open Archaeology 1 (1).Google Scholar
Kintigh, K.W. & Altschul, J.H.. 2010. Sustaining the digital archaeological record. Heritage Management 3: 264–74. https://doi.org/10.1179/hma.2010.3.2.264Google Scholar
Kintigh, K.W., Altschul, J.H., Beaudry, M.C., Drennan, R.D., Kinzig, A.P., Kohler, T.A., Limp, W.F., Maschner, H.D.G., Michener, W.K., Pauketat, T.R., Peregrine, P., Sabloff, J.A., Wilkinson, T.J., Wright, H.T. & Zeder, M.A.. 2014a. Grand challenges for archaeology. American Antiquity 79: 524. https://doi.org/10.7183/0002-7316.79.1.5Google Scholar
Kintigh, K.W., Altschul, J.H., Beaudry, M.C., Drennan, R.D., Kinzig, A.P., Kohler, T.A., Limp, W.F., Maschner, H.D.G., Michener, W.K., Pauketat, T.R., Peregrine, P., Sabloff, J.A., Wilkinson, T.J., Wright, H.T. & Zeder, M.A.. 2014b. Grand challenges for archaeology. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 111: 879–80. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1324000111Google Scholar
Lake, M. 2012. Open archaeology. World Archaeology 44: 471–78. https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2012.748521Google Scholar
Lane, P.J. 2015. Archaeology in the age of the Anthropocene: a critical assessment of its scope and societal contributions. Journal of Field Archaeology 40: 485–98. https://doi.org/10.1179/2042458215Y.0000000022Google Scholar
Lightfoot, K.G. & Cuthrell, R.Q.. 2015. Anthropogenic burning and the Anthropocene in Late Holocene California. The Holocene 25: 1581–87. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959683615588376Google Scholar
Mammone, A. 2016. Austerity is undermining a common European identity. will fascism result? Washington Post. Available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20180227193754/https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2016/04/22/austerity-is-undermining-a-common-european-identity-will-fascism-result/?utm_term=.ed7f5eb79d88 (accessed 22 February 2018).Google Scholar
May, K., Binding, C. & Tudhope, D.. 2015. Barriers and opportunities for linked open data use in archaeology and cultural heritage. Archäologische Informationen 38 (1): 173–84.Google Scholar
McManamon, F.P. & Kintigh, K.. 2010. Digital antiquity: transforming archaeological data into knowledge. The SAA Archaeological Record 10 (2): 3740.Google Scholar
Miller, A., Juels, A., Shi, E., Parno, B. & Katz, J.. 2014. Permacoin: repurposing Bitcoin work for data preservation. 2014 IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy: 475–90. https://doi.org/10.1109/SP.2014.37Google Scholar
NADB. 2016. National Archeological Database, Reports Module. Available at: https://www.nps.gov/archeology/tools/nadb.htm (accessed 22 February 2018).Google Scholar
NADB Maps. 1993. NADB-Maps Archeological Site Counts (State Historic Preservation Officers). Archeology Program, National Park Service, Washington, D.C. Available at: http://wayback.archive-it.org/6471/20150825214608/ http://cast.uark.edu/other/nps/maplib/USsittot.1993.html (accessed 22 February 2018).Google Scholar
Nicholas, G. 2008. Native peoples and archaeology (indigenous archaeology), in Pearsall, D. (ed.) The encyclopedia of archaeology, volume 3: 1660–69. Oxford: Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-012373962-9.00203-XGoogle Scholar
Rabinowitz, A. 2014. It's about time: historical periodization and linked ancient world data. ISAW Papers 7 (22). Available at: http://dlib.nyu.edu/awdl/isaw/isaw-papers/7/rabinowitz/ (accessed 22 February 2018).Google Scholar
Raviele, M.E. 2014. Archaeology and an interdisciplinary Digital Age. Institute of Museum and Library Services. Available at: https://www.imls.gov/news-events/upnext-blog/2014/05/archaeology-and-interdisciplinary-digital-age (accessed 22 February 2018).Google Scholar
Rocks-MacQueen, D. 2014. The actual amount of National Science Foundation funding for archaeology. Doug's archaeology: investigating the profession and research, 6 March 2014. Available at: https://dougsarchaeology.wordpress.com/2014/03/06/the-actual-amount-of-national-science-foundation-funding-for-archaeology/ (accessed 22 February 2018).Google Scholar
Shaw, R., Rabinowitz, A., Golden, P. & Kansa, E.. 2016. A sharing-oriented design strategy for networked knowledge organization systems. International Journal on Digital Libraries 17: 4961. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00799-015-0164-0Google Scholar
Sheehan, B. 2015. Comparing digital archaeological repositories: tDAR versus Open Context. Behavioral & Social Sciences Librarian 34: 173213. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639269.2015.1096155Google Scholar
Wells, J.J., Kansa, E.C., Kansa, S.W., Yerka, S.J., Anderson, D.G., Bissett, T.G., Myers, K.N. & DeMuth, R.C.. 2014. Web-based discovery and integration of archaeological historic properties inventory data: the Digital Index of North American Archaeology (DINAA). Literary and Linguistic Computing 29: 349–60. https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqu028Google Scholar
White, A.A. 2014. Inter-linking with DINAA; database search; dataset clean up. Eastern Woodlands Household Archaeology Data project. Available at: http://www.householdarchaeology.org/whats-new/inter-linking-with-dinaa-database-search-dataset-clean-up (accessed 22 February 2018).Google Scholar
Zalasiewicz, J., Waters, C.N., Williams, M., Barnosky, A.D., Cearreta, A., Crutzen, P., Ellis, E., Ellis, M.A., Fairchild, I.J., Grinevald, J., Haff, P.K., Hajdas, I., Leinfelder, R., McNeill, J., Odada, E.O., Poirier, C., Richter, D., Steffen, W., Summerhayes, C., Syvitski, J.P.M., Vidas, D., Wagreich, M., Wing, S.L., Wolfe, A.P., An, Z. & Oreskes, N.. 2015. When did the Anthropocene begin? A mid-twentieth century boundary level is stratigraphically optimal. Quaternary International 383: 204207. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2014.11.045Google Scholar