Ouiatenon and its Informational Analogs: Making Connections in Colonial Archaeology Less Hard to Handle with the Digital Index of North American Archaeology (DINAA)

Summary

The archaeological remains of forts, outposts, settlements, extraction sites, and other activity areas established during European colonial ventures in North America span several hundred years and thousands of kilometers. The intricacies and interconnectedness of these sites are not easy to quantify or describe within the traditional limits of archaeological data management. The Digital Index of North American Archaeology (DINAA) can reveal colonial sites and their neighborhoods of effect on a multiscalar basis of regions defined by research designs. The ontological bridging vocabularies of DINAA also permit consideration of relationships of sites from colonial contexts across spatiotemporal divides, cultural categories, and active behaviors. The characteristics of the French-American and Algonquian sphere of interaction in and around Fort Ouiatenon (1717-1791), Indiana, are used as as an example against which to compare and contrast the data representation of colonial archaeological sites in eastern North America. DINAA is constructed on a model of linked open data (LOD) which facilitates the connection of numerous data sets across a variety of networked systems; the rich-yet-incomplete record of Fort Ouiatenon helps to suggest what forms of data may be most useful for larger research collaborations into colonial archaeology.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• The Acid Test: Exploring The Utility of The Digital Index of North American Archaeology (DINAA) For Use in Applies Research

Keywords

Spatial Coverage