Taking a look back at 2014

We have a great deal planned for 2015, and it’ll start with a bang. We have a new software release almost ready to go, and our contributors continue to upload and add lots of materials to tDAR. The tDAR application had two major updates in 2014, knap and lithic. A bunch of new features were added including enhancing users’ profile pages, allowing users to duplicate resources for faster customization and upload, and dedicated pages for keywords.

New content was added to tDAR by our clients and contributors including a number of amazing 3D scans from around the world uploaded by CAST; materials from the USAF Shaw Air Force Base and Avon Park Air Force Range; and reports from PaleoResearch Institute. Closer to home, our ASU colleagues Michelle Hegmon, Margaret Nelson, and Katherine Spielmann and their students continue to add content related to their research on Mimbres ceramics and sites and Southwestern faunal collections to tDAR.

We are continuing our work, begun in earnest last fall with the Corps of Engineers and the US Air Force on digital archaeological archives for their bases and other facilities. We are also still working with the Phoenix Area Office of the Bureau of Reclamation and Midwest Archeological Center of the National Park Service on their rich archives of archaeological material.

We have partnered with the relatively new Center for Archaeology and Society here at ASU and begun collaborating with the Archaeological Institute of America, about which more in another post. We continue our work with our partners at the Society for American Archaeology on activities that promote good digital curation of archaeological data. We can’t wait to see what the rest of 2015 holds.

Content added to tDAR in 2014

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.

Most Viewed

• Prehistoric Irrigation in Arizona: Symposium 1988 (10265)
• Mimbres Pottery Images Digital Database (MimPIDD) (6411)
• Aztec Ruin Dendro Data (3293)
• Sapelo Island (3207)
• Standards for Data Collection from Human Skeletal Remains (2093)
• Jordan’s Journey (44PG302) (2000)
• The Archaeology of Highland Chiriqui, Panama — Documents, Images, and Datasets (1450)
• Eaton Site (1324)
• Aztec West Ruin: Perishable Artifacts and Pottery from Excavations by the American Museum of Natural History (1248)
• Tikal Report 11: Map of the Ruins of Tikal, El Petén, Guatemala and Georeferenced Versions of the Maps Therein (1193)

Most Downloaded

• Exploring Iran: The Photography of Erich F. Schmidt, 1930-1940, Supplementary Material (112)
• Part 3: Quiriguá Wider Periphery, Additional Illustrations and Tables (89)
• Grand Challenges for Archaeology – Crowd Sourcing Report (80)
• EMAP – Obsidian Flakes (58)
• Archeological Investigations at Joshua Tree National Park, California (49)
• Petroglyphs of the Picacho Mountains, South Central Arizona (40)
• Tikal Report 11: Georeferenced Map- “Ruins of Tikal” (with border) (39)
• Submerged Cultural Resources Study: USS Arizona Memorial and Pearl Harbor National Historic Landmark (39)
• Mimbres Pottery Database (Public) (37)
• Tikal Report 11: Georeferenced Map- “Ruins of Tikal” (with border) (27)