The Big Data History of Archaeology: How Site Definitions and Linked Open Data Practices are Transforming our Understanding of the Historical Past

Summary

This paper examines big data patterns of historic archaeological site definitions and distributions across several temporal and behavioral vectors. The Digital Index of North American Archaeology (DINAA) provides publicly free and open data interoperability and linkage features for archaeological information resources. In 2015, DINAA had integrated fifteen US state archaeological databases, containing information about 0.5 million archaeological resources, as a linked open data network of digital repositories, artifact collections, textual resources, and other science and humanities information sets. Informed queries of DINAA can help us consider relationships of historic sites across spatiotemporal divides, cultural and behavioral categories, and disciplinary taxonomies through a bridging ontological system which can be openly expanded or edited by interested practitioners. DINAA does not contain sensitive site details, and data are rendered in a grainy (ca. 20-km2) tile grid. Informative query results can be exported or linked to other systems through stable web identifiers.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Digital Archaeology Data: Issues and Possibilities   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2016

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 252