Building a Shared Database: The Comparative Mission Archaeology Portal (CMAP), Struggles, Successes, and Future Directions

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Boxed but not Forgotten Redux or: How I Learned to Stop Digging and Love Old Collections" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The Historical Archaeology program at the Florida Museum of Natural History recently launched the Comparative Mission Archaeology Portal (CMAP) as part of a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant. Building off of and modifying the database created by the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery (DAACS), CMAP aims to be a web-based initiative to allow comparative research on mission sites throughout the Americas, using both legacy collections and those generated by new research. This presentation will discuss the website and associated database, as well as some of the successes and struggles in creating a web-based database that can be used by researchers around the world. Issues such as consistency and replicability of analysis and data entry, rigidness versus fluidity in analytical and contextual categories, balancing researcher and curatorial needs, and steps towards larger-scale data aggregation will be discussed.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020   •
• Boxed but not Forgotten Redux or: How I Learned to Stop Digging and Love Old Collections

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 553