Collaborative Research: DINAA (Digital Index of North American Archaeology): Facilitating Big Picture Research in American Archaeology

在过去的一个世纪里，美国各地发现了数以百万计的考古遗址。然而，这些庞大的考古数据记录目前仍然以各种不兼容的格式和数据库结构分散在很大程度上无法访问的公共和私人数据存储中。DINAA（北美考古数字索引）项目将与来自全国各地的州、部落和联邦人员协调，获取、索引和整合这些记录的非敏感方面。这项工作由田纳西大学的David G. Anderson、Open Context的Eric C. Kansa、亚历山大档案研究所的Sarah Whitcher Kansa博士和印第安纳大学南本德分校的Joshua Wells博士领导。由此产生的数据库和地图具有较低的空间分辨率，以保护遗址的完整性，但在其他方面，将首次允许在北美人类定居的整个时期，在大陆尺度上可视化和探索人类对自然和社会环境变化的反应。通过消除访问、法律和技术障碍，该项目将为研究人员、土地管理者和公众提供真正的“开放数据”，以促进跨学科研究、强大的计算建模新方法、数据密集型指导以及地方、区域和国家尺度上的考古资源管理。随时可用的在线地图、数据集以及与类似产品和分析工具的生态系统的链接，将提高公众对一般科学研究，特别是考古学的认识、使用和欣赏。DINAA项目直面考古信息学面临的一个重大挑战：如何将目前不兼容且支离破碎的遗产信息系统连接在一起，使我们的社区能够参与尖端科学。DINAA团队已经处理了15个州超过50万个站点的信息，这个项目将把这项工作扩展到北美的其他州。通过广泛采用共享和开放的数据格式、分析和传播程序，DINAA将极大地提高美国考古遗址、报告、藏品和其他数据集的科学研究价值和土地管理潜力。任何使用它的人都可以免费下载地图、引文记录和其他来自合并站点记录的信息（没有坐标或其他敏感数据在线呈现），并且不受知识产权限制。DINAA这样做的同时保持严格的安全性。不发布或存储站点位置数据；相反，软件将它们分配到一个400平方公里的网格中（每边20公里），用于在线可视化。原始考古数据可以被整合并用于解决大规模和不同规模的人类住区的基本问题，这一证明将激发世界范围内的类似努力，并作为催化剂，加强美国考古学对数字数据收集、管理和出版的专业承诺，并促进公众对科学研究的支持。

Millions of archaeological sites have been recorded across the United States over the past century. However, this vast record of archaeological data currently remains fragmented in a variety of incompatible formats and database structures scattered across largely inaccessible public and private data stores. The DINAA (Digital Index of North American Archaeology) project will obtain, index, and integrate nonsensitive aspects of this record in coordination with state, tribal, and federal personnel from across the country. The effort is led by David G. Anderson of the University of Tennessee, Eric C. Kansa of Open Context, Dr. Sarah Whitcher Kansa of the Alexandria Archive Institute, and Dr. Joshua Wells of Indiana University South Bend. The resulting databases and maps have a low spatial resolution to protect site integrity, but will otherwise permit, for the first time, the visualization and exploration of human responses to change in the natural and social environment at a continental scale over the entire period of human settlement in North America. By removing access, legal and technical barriers, this project will offer researchers, land managers, and the public truly "Open Data" to facilitate interdisciplinary research, powerful new approaches to computational modeling, data intensive instruction, and archaeological resource management at local, regional and national scales. The ready availability of online maps, datasets, and links to an ecosystem of similar products and analysis tools will enhance public awareness, use, and appreciation for scientific research in general and archaeology in particular. The DINAA project addresses head-on a major challenge facing archaeological informatics: how to connect currently incompatible and fragmentary legacy information systems together so our community can engage in cutting-edge science. The DINAA team has already processed information on over 500,000 sites in 15 states, and this project will expand this effort to the remaining states in North America. DINAA will greatly improve the scientific research value and land management potential of the US archaeological site, report, collections, and other datasets, by broadly employing shared and open data formats, analyses, and dissemination procedures. Anyone using it can download maps, citation records, and other information from the combined site records (no coordinates or other sensitive data are present online) free of charge, and free of intellectual property restrictions. DINAA does this while maintaining strict security. Site locational data is not published or stored; instead, software allocates them to a 400 square kilometer grid (20km on a side) for online visualization. The demonstration that primary archaeological data can be integrated and used to address fundamental questions of human settlement at vast and varying scales will stimulate similar efforts worldwide, and serve as a catalyst to strengthen professional commitments to digital data collection, management, and publication throughout American archaeology, as well as foster public support for scientific research.