Examining DINAA’s Potential to Reframe Our Archaeological Vocabulary

This series of images demonstrates some of the different ways that we can use DINAA to develop a broader understanding of the past. Image 1 shows all positive responses to a simple ‘mounds’ query and ideally provides an accurate representation of the distribution of mound, and/or mound related sites currently in the DINNA archives. Image 2 shows the distributions and concentrations of Woodland Period sites within DINNA. Independently both of these maps are useful, because they help us to understand inter-state distributions of people based on either culture-history period, or the presence of an artifact type, whereas previously such distributions would have required hours to produce. But when we use these selection and query abilities together, we can develop more specific maps. Image 3 shows all of the mound sites returned when the query is restricted to Woodland Period sites. Image 5 provides an even more specific view, isolating only mound sites associated with the Late Woodland Period (which can be compared to Image 4, which displays the distribution of all Late Woodland sites in the DINAA files). Ultimately, this gives us a much broader view of the past then when working solely with specific archaeological cultures.

DINNA CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK IMAGE 2: Current distribution of General Woodland sites in DINAA

IMAGE 1: Current distribution of all sites returning positive result from ‘mounds’ query and table of period distributions.

IMAGE 3: Current distribution of Woodland sites returning positive results in ‘mounds’ query and table of distributions.

IMAGE 5: Current distribution of Late Woodland sites returning positive results in ‘mounds’ query.

WOODLAND SUBPERIOD SITE COUNT Early Woodland 99

Middle Woodland 527

Late Woodland 470

Late Woodland / Mississippian 14

Terminal Middle Woodland 1

TOTAL 1111

SITE PERIOD SITE COUNT Paleoindian 25 Archaic 445 Woodland 2642 Late Prehistoric 733 Protohistoric 6 Prehistoric Undifferentiated 3069 Historic 429 Uncategorized 744 TOTAL 8093

IMAGE 4: Current distribution of Late Woodland sites in DINAA

OVERVIEW The goal of the Digital Index of North American Archaeology (DINAA) is to construct a system by which the separate archaeological site files databases from across North America can interact and interoperate. Our goal is not replace the current system, but complement it by providing a service that allows for a broader ‘big picture’ view of the past that is not easily available otherwise. Basically, we are constructing a system that will help make the files from Ohio (or any other state) compatible with both those in neighboring Indiana but also Florida. This is important because most states developed their own archaeological ontologies independently of each other decades ago, and often there are differences in terminology and spelling that can make typical queries difficult (ex: Paleoindian vs Paleo-Indian vs Clovis or Adena vs Middle Woodland).

We accomplish this creating a translational database file for each state’s ontology. These translational files specify which category in the DINNA Controlled Vocabulary (general hierarchical culture history based on the CIDOC-CRM ontology) each state culture-history term best fits into (Vocabulary listed on the bottom left). We also attempt to assign radiocarbon date ranges from definitive reports and regional syntheses to each culture/history term, and provide citations for our research through the free and open source bibliographic web service, Zotero. (The figure to the left illustrates how the layer works.) Once this basic context, gleaned form the existing literature, is established archaeologists can begin exploring our understanding of the past across state lines - searching by culture history period and (eventually) temporal context as well.

In these ways, DINNA allows for an increasingly contextualized understanding of the archaeological past. This contextualization is important because, archaeological cultures are almost always defined by lists of traits, and even with decades of advances in archaeological thought and theory we are still somewhat constrained by artifact typologies and checklists when determining site affiliation. Despite, our best efforts, these decisions regarding how we distinguish different groups of archaeological peoples are still very educated guesses – guesses that affect how we think about past peoples, who they interacted with and the beliefs they had. As anthropologists, we recognize that past realities were often much more fluid than our culture history constructs allow.

The authors do not assume to know a better model by which to understand the past, the criticisms above are simply some well-documented weaknesses with our culture-history model (Largely inherited from its normative origins). What we believe though, is that by creating a system through which separate state databases can interoperate, some of these problems can be addressed. This is because DINAA retains much of the original site file information, and offers a powerful query tool, that allows scholars to perform searches of this data as well* (site type, diagnostic artifacts, NRHP status, etc). Using this query function and selectable culture history periods in the DINAA controlled vocabulary we can begin to develop broader understandings of the past, DINAA allows us to reframe the archaeological vocabulary through an increased contextualization.

*NOTE: DINAA does NOT make site locations or other sensitive data about sites available to the public. We use site centroid data to assign sites to a 20x20km grid. This allows for a reasonably high resolution graphic (at the national scale) while protecting sensitive archaeological site data, and provides a more regular visual check of query selections than provided by irregular county boundaries.

CASE STUDY –MOUND SITES

State Historic Preservation Offices (SHPOs) each maintain their own independent archaeological site databases. This can result in states utilizing different language to describe similar sites, imposing modern political boundaries on our understanding of the past. This poster examines how archaeological vocabulary is implemented across state lines, and explores how a supplementary structure - such as the Digital Index of North American Archaeology (DINAA) – can be used to help interoperate divergent systems. DINAA’s multi-state approach offers North American archaeology a chance to develop a more standardized vocabulary that can evolve nimbly with user input, but that interoperates with legacy terms so that professionals can recognize and query concepts that relate to those in their local terminologies. Because DINAA has the potential to both ‘translate’ our past work and update our terminological framework, SHPO databases can be better interoperated across state lines with derivative benefits in multi-state research. DINAA is an ongoing project that seeks to organize archaeological data from multiple states within a common online architecture. Because DINAA is public, it only hosts non-sensitive information, and exists to supplement (not replace) the current data management systems maintained by the SHPO offices in each state.

ABSTRACT

Paleoindian o Clovis o Folsom o Early Paleoindian o Late Paleoindian

Dalton o Late Paleoindian / Early

Archaic o Cumberland o Pre-Clovis

Archaic o Late Archaic

Bluegrass o Middle / Late Archaic o Terminal Late Archaic o Late Archaic / Early Woodland o Early Archaic

Big Sandy o Middle Archaic

Woodland o Early Woodland

Adena o Middle Woodland

Crab Orchard o Late Woodland

Albee Allson LaMotte Brems

o Terminal Middle Woodland o Late Woodland / Mississippian

Late Prehistoric o Mississippian

Middle Mississippian • Angel • Caborn Welborn

Upper Mississippian Early Mississippian Late Mississippian

Protohistoric Contact Period Historic

o 19th Century o 20th Century o 21st Century o African American o Delaware o Euroamerican o Historic Indian o Historic Non-Indian

Prehistoric Undifferentiated Uncategorized

o No Data o Other o Unknown o Unknown Native American

DINNA CONTROLLED VOCABULARY†

R. Carl DeMuth1, Kelsey Noack Myers1, Thad Bissett2, David G. Anderson2, Joshua J. Wells3, Eric C. Kansa4, Sarah W. Kansa5, Stephen Yerka2

1: Indiana University Bloomington 2: University of Tennessee Knoxville 3: Indiana University South Bend 4: Open Context & UC, Berkeley (D-Lab) 5: Alexandria Archive Institute

Further Information http://ux.opencontext.org/blog/

archaeology-site-data/

Our project is hosted on GitHub you can download it and contribute to the project by accessing our controlled vocabulary at: https://github.com/ekansa/oc-ontologies/blob/master/vocabularies/dinaa.owl

I wasn’t able to make it to Austin, but I am standing by to talk about this poster feel free to call me at 304.691.0660. OR (if you have a smart phone handy) we can do a Google hangout just visit the link below, scan this QR CODE. (the one to the right), or invite me to a new hangout (My username is rcdemuth). Link: http://goo.gl/x2C52d

VIRTUALLY TALK TO THE LEAD AUTHOR NOW!!!!

R. Carl DeMuth Graduate Student, IU Bloomington

Department of Anthropology 304.691.0660

rcdemuth@indiana.edu rcdemuth @rcdemuth rdemuth

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†: As of April 2014, in progress.