Digital Antiquity Project Receives Mellon Foundation Planning Grant

Posted on by Leigh Anne Ellison

In 2007, a multidisciplinary team of researchers from Archaeology Data Services at the University of York, Arizona State University, the University of Arkansas, the Pennsylvania State University, SRI Foundation, and Washington State University was awarded an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grant to develop a long-term plan for the organization and operation of integrated digital archaeological data repository. This activity led to the creation of an organization, archaeoinformatics.org.  Utilizing their planning grant, the members of archaeoinformatics.org developed detailed plan.

The plan called for development of a user-friendly and attractive but technologically and financially feasible archaeological repository to provide for much wider accessibility to archaeological data and its long-term preservation.  The plan led to the development of a more detailed proposal to the Mellon Foundation for funds to create Digital Antiquity.

Click here for a copy of the 2008 report on the results of the planning grant.

NSF Human Social Dynamics Grant Awarded for Development of Archaeological Data Integration System

Posted on by Leigh Anne Ellison

Archaeologists and computer scientists in SHESC and the School of Engineering at ASU were awarded a 3-year grant for the development of a knowledge-based archaeological data integration system. The purpose of the system is to amalgamate long-term archaeological data on society, population, and environment in an easily searchable database, so that scientists across disciplines can utilize important archaeological data sets. This revolutionary project involved a multidisciplinary team of researchers, graduate student assistants and undergraduate interns. One of the outcomes of the research project was the prototype of the Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR) which is the repository further developed and used by Digital Antiquity.

For more information, please see the full 2006 Project Summary.

Results and Recommendations of Cyberinfrastructure Workshop

Posted on by Leigh Anne Ellison

In July, 2006, Keith Kintigh published an article in American Antiquity entitled, “The Promise and Challenge of Archaeological Data Integration,” reporting on the 2004 the workshop of the same name. Archaeologists, computer scientists and other informatics researchers met at the 2004 workshop to develop a shared vision of archaeological cyberinfrastructure based on new technologies in information integration. The workshop members concluded that a well-planned infrastructure would enable research at greater scales than currently possible by providing more effective access to data. The workshop conclusions also noted that such an infrastructure would protect fragile data while improving documentation.

For more information, check out the full article linked here.

Cybertools and Archaeology

Posted on by Leigh Anne Ellison

Dean Snow and colleagues Mark Gahegan, Lee Giles, Kenneth Hirth, George Milner, Prasenjit Mitra and James Wang recently published an article in Science about creating an appropriate architecture for entering and managing archaeological data. Their proposed system would integrate image and text searches, GIS analysis, as well as visualization and content management tools. Additionally, their planned use of open-source versions of the toolkit would allow more accessibility by different users, facilitating the addition and use of data.

Read the article online here.