Managing Digital Data at the North Carolina Office of State Archaeology: Challenges and Directions

Summary

The North Carolina Office of State Archaeology (OSA) was created by the North Carolina General Assembly in 1973 to coordinate and implement a statewide archaeological preservation program. Central to this program is the OSA’s management of records, including those documenting the more than 50,000 archaeological sites located in the state’s 100 counties, and a library of nearly 8,000 associated reports. The OSA Research Center curates tens of thousands of artifacts and their associated records from across North Carolina.

While there are computer databases for the site forms, bibliographic entries, maps, and artifacts, there is variability in the extent to which all records have been added to these databases. Arduous and labor intensive, the process of digitizing our records has evolved with the available technology and been limited by staffing. Our goal is to have this data in GIS and electronic databases accessible to researchers and easy to query. We will discuss our efforts to reach this goal and the potential benefits of digitizing our records.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22473