Related Guides
Data Repositories
- Open Context Open Context archives archaeological research data and digital documentation
- tDAR: The Digital Archaeological Record The Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR) is an international digital repository for the digital records of archaeological investigations. tDAR’s use, development, and maintenance are governed by Digital Antiquity, an organization dedicated to ensuring the long-term preservation of irreplaceable archaeological data and to broadening the access to these data.
Americas
- Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery The Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery is a Web-based initiative designed to foster inter-site, comparative archaeological research on slavery throughout the Chesapeake, the Carolinas, and the Caribbean.
- Built in America: The Historic American Buildings Survey / Historic American Engineering Records Administered since 1933 through cooperative agreements with the National Park Service, the Library of Congress, and the private sector, ongoing programs of the National Park Service have recorded America's built environment in multiformat surveys comprising more than 581,000 measured drawings, large-format photographs, and written histories for more than 43,000 historic structures and sites dating from Pre-Columbian times to the twentieth century.
- tDAR: Society for American Archaeology This collection contains the abstracts and presentations from the Society for American Archaeology annual meetings. SAA has partnered with Digital Antiquity to archive their annual conference abstracts and make the presentations available. This collection contains meeting abstracts and presentations dating from 2015 to the present.
- tDAR: Society for Historical Archaeology This collection contains the abstracts and presentations from the Society for Historical Archaeology annual meetings. SHA has partnered with Digital Antiquity to archive their annual conference abstracts and make the presentations available. This collection contains meeting abstracts and presentations dating from 2013 to the present.
- Mayan Epigraphic Database Project (MED) Glyph Images The Mayan Epigraphic Database Project (MED) is an experiment in networked scholarship with the purpose of enhancing Classic Mayan epigraphic research. At present, MED consists of a relational database of glyphs ("gnumbers"), images, phonetic values ("pvalues"), and semantic values ("svalues") according to the consensus among various American Mayanists (MacLeod and Reents-Budet 1994). Also present is the beginning of an archive of digitally transcribed Mayan texts.
- Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions Founded in 1968, the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions Program (CMHI) is an Active Research Archive and on-going Recording Program of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, devoted to the recording and dissemination of information about all known ancient Maya inscriptions and their associated figurative art . The CMHI publishes its detailed original line drawings and photographic documentation in a unique series of folio volumes and makes its material available to researchers through its archive and via the world wide web.
- The Open Khipu Repository This open-source digital repository stores the most up-to-date data and metadata on extant Inka-style khipus from archaeological sites in the Andes, as well as museums around the world. Inka khipus were unique pre-Columbian, Andean recording devices that used three-dimensional signs -- primarily knots, cords, and colors -- as symbols functionally akin to those of early writing systems in other cultures.
Asia & Pacific
- Archaeological Reports Digital Library (Heritage New Zealand) Heritage New Zealand holds an extensive collection of unpublished archaeological reports resulting from site surveys, excavations, research programmes and archaeological authorities. This collection contains volumes dating from the 1950s to the present which are all accessible through the Archaeological Reports Digital Library.
- NSW Archaeology Online (University of Sydney) NSW Archaeology Online is a sustainable digital archive of information about the archaeology and heritage of important cultural places in New South Wales.
Europe
- Archaeology Data Service Archaeological data repository of UK digital heritage data, including unpublished reports, journals and metadata records,
Mediterranean & Near and Middle East
- ADEMNES: Archaeobotanical Database of Eastern Mediterranean and Near Eastern Sites It contains primarily archaeobotanical seed data from the geographic regions of Aegean Greece, Turkey, Western Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, and Northern Egypt. The chronological coverage comprises the Epipalaeolithic to the Medieval periods, with a special focus on the Bronze and Iron Ages.
- Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites Summaries of excavation results with references to full reports. Europe, Middle East, and Africa. Glossary, maps, map indexes, illustrations. Also available at Mugar Stacks DE 59 P7.
- ABZU Abzu is a guide to networked open access data relevant to the study and public presentation of the Ancient Near East and the Ancient Mediterranean world.
Datasets
- Comparative Archaeology Database (University of Pittsburgh Center for Comparative Archaeology) Publishes primary archaeological data to complement more traditional means of publication, such as journals, collections of articles, and monographs.
- Journal of Open Archaeology Data The Journal of Open Archaeology Data (JOAD) features peer reviewed data papers describing archaeology datasets with high reuse potential. We work with a number of specialist and institutional data repositories to ensure that the associated data are professionally archived, preserved, and openly available. Equally importantly, the data and the papers are citable, and reuse is tracked.
- International Tree-Ring Data Bank (ITRDB) The World Data Service for Paleoclimatology manages the International Tree-Ring Data Bank (ITRDB), the world's largest public archive of tree ring data. Oversight is provided by the ITRDB Advisory Committee. The ITRDB includes raw ring width, wood density, isotope measurements, and site growth index chronologies from more than 5,000 sites on six continents. Reconstructed climate parameters are also available for some areas.
- Human Impacts Pollen Collection While many pollen reference collections emphasize indigenous regional, often arboreal taxa, the Human Impacts Pollen Collection focuses on taxa relating to peoples’ impacts on the environment and landscape. These include cultivated and ornamental plants, but also ruderals, segetals, exotics, and invasives, which are often, although not exclusively, forbs, grasses, and shrubby taxa. This collection of pollen reference materials provides a tool for helping to identify the pollen from these types of plants and reconstruct changing vegetation patterns.
- Penn Museum Object Datasets You can download the object data available in the online collections database as either a CSV, XML or JSON file. Each Curatorial Sections' data is available below as well as a single file containing all 379,498 object records.
- Northern European Bog Bodies Dataset Dataset of 1000+ bog bodies at 266 sites: location, year found, preservation level, sex, estimated age, assumed cause of death, and more
