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.

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

  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 19th 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 83rd 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  9th, 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 10th, 2018

Available for meetings

 

Wednesday April 11th, 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 12th, 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 13th, 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 21st 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 14th, 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.

 

Since July, Digital Antiquity staff have been working with the Digital Archive of Huhugam Archaeology (DAHA) research team to compile archaeological grey-literature reports on the Huhugam.  A new post is up on the DAHA website about how (and why) we identified Huhugam geographic sub-areas and added these to tDAR basemaps for improved, automatic geospatial metadata generation as we upload files.  Are you intrigued?  You can read the full post by David Abbott, Keith Kintigh, and Mary Whelan here.

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

  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!

The annual thrill of graduation is just receding at Arizona State University, but before it is overcome by the summer heat, we recognize the achievements and promise of recent grad Saarah Munir.  Last month, Saarah received her Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology. During the fall and spring semesters of her last year at ASU, Saarah worked at Digital Antiquity.  She provided valuable assistance in the creation of a digital archive for Salt River Project’s cultural resource management program.  She exhibited great care and diligence in scanning and organizing documents and preparing metadata records for reports that were entered into the new digital library.

Congratulations, to Saarah and her family, from all of us at The Center for Digital Antiquity!

In the fall, Saarah will enter the graduate program of Columbia University, working on a Master of the Arts in Museum Anthropology.  She hopes eventually to obtain a Ph.D. in Anthropology.  But, wherever her professional development leads, Saarah plans to work at broadening access and representation of marginalized communities through the study and presentation of material culture.

Before landing in NYC this fall, she will spend the summer at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, working as an intern in Archaeological Collections at the Anthropology Department of the National Museum of Natural History.  There she will assist in research related to ongoing projects, cataloging, and artifact identification. The projects she is likely to work on include Iron Age sites from Senegal, Post Classic Maya sites from the coastal areas of Chiapas, and a site on the Cocle Province in Panama.

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 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 2015 (San Francisco), or 2016 (Orlando) 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.

Beginning in 2004, archeologists working on behalf of the Texas Department of Transportation conducted several phases of investigations at the Kitchen Branch site (41CP220) in northeast Texas’ Camp County. The Kitchen Branch site, situated on the northern bank of the Kitchen Branch of Prairie Creek (the site’s namesake), was located within the footprint of a proposed bridge slated for construction during expansion of FM 557 and would (within the expansion area) be destroyed as a result. For compliance with Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 (as amended) and the Antiquities Code of Texas , those impacted areas were investigated and excavated in detail prior to bridge construction. While the site contained evidence of occupations that ranged from among the earliest humans in the New World through the 20th century, researchers focused on the remnants of a single-family home site attributed to the later phases of Caddo native history, the peoples who dominated the region of northeast Texas, eastern Oklahoma, northwest Louisiana, and western Arkansas from A.D. 800 through the age of European contact.

Extensive investigations beginning in 2004 revealed some 236 prehistoric features and collected roughly 20,000 artifacts, shedding light on a lesser-known period of Caddo culture in this particular area.  The results have been interpreted for the public by Texas Department of Transportation and AmaTerra Environmental, Inc., and are available in tDAR now!  We encourage you to visit tDAR and download a digital copy of this report, designed to be approachable and interesting to a lay audience.

Peering Through the Sands of Time, The Archeology of the Caddo at the Kitchen Branch Site (41CP220) in East Texas. Mason D. Miller, Timothy K. Perttula, Rachel J. Feit. 125 East 11th Street, Austin, Texas 78701: Texas Department of Transportation Environmental Affairs Division Archeological Studies Program. 2014 ( tDAR id: 407094) ; doi:10.6067/XCV8P55QG4