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

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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.