Documenting America's Cultural Heritage

在美国，私人考古收藏品很丰富，保存着90%以上的信息文物，如箭头指针。史前文化如何应对逆境和环境变化的完整故事需要将私人收藏中的知识纳入考古研究。俄亥俄州中部考古数字化调查(COADS)是第一个系统地绘制和数字化美国特定地区的收藏品的工作，该地区是俄亥俄州中部肖托山谷非凡的史前景观。它的主要创新之一是将当地知识视为考古记录和研究的组成部分。在这个过程中，Coads记录了史前文化的转变，作为对人口增长、经济变化和景观发展的回应。它用考古学的独特视角来研究长期技术变革的节奏和模式。COADS是让公众参与促进对人类状况的了解的典范，并提高了对史前土著文化如何长期繁荣的理解。COADS还为学生和相关公民提供适当的测绘和记录方法方面的培训，并扩大保护规划的数据收集。COADS有助于有效和负责任地管理遗产资源，并更有效地规划发展，在最大限度地保护遗产的同时利用遗产。最后，COADS创建了一个庞大的虚拟收藏品数据库，在实物材料分散后很久仍可用于研究和教育目的。COADS将私人收藏的材料与之前基于现场和区域的分析整合为一个人类活动随时间分布的复合模型。以前的工作构建了一个相辅相成的模式，即从流动性过渡到居住稳定性(即更多的久坐人口)，同时转移到对种子作物的日益关注和最终驯化。COADS使用几何形态计量学来探索：1)通过对工具形状和工具石精化程度的预测效果来探索定位论的含义；以及2)技术从一种“类型”向另一种“类型”过渡的本质。Coads创建了一个地区最大的私人收藏档案。通过高分辨率的3D和2D扫描，Coads为公众和学者提供了一个便携的研究和教育资源。人们越来越意识到，主要出土遗址并不能准确地描述史前时代。人们必须研究风景的所有部分和过去文化系统的多个方面。记录私人收藏填补了官方记录中的许多空白。

Private archaeological collections are abundant in the United States, holding upwards of 90% of informative artifacts like "arrow points." The full story of how prehistoric cultures coped with adversity and environmental change demands incorporating into archaeological research the knowledge that resides in private collections. The Central Ohio Archaeological Digitization Survey (COADS) is the first systematic effort to map and digitize collections from a specific region of the United States, the remarkable prehistoric landscape of Ohio's central Scioto Valley. One of its chief innovations is to treat local knowledge as integral to the archaeological record and research. In the process, COADS documents prehistoric cultural transitions as responses to population growth, economic change, and landscape development. It uses archaeology's unique perspective to study tempo and mode of long-term technological change. COADS serves as a model for engaging the public in contributing to understanding of the human condition, and improves understanding of how prehistoric native cultures thrived over long periods. COADS also provides students and involved citizens training in proper mapping and documentation methods, and expands data-collection for preservation planning. COADS facilitates efficient and responsible stewardship of heritage resources, and planning more efficiently for development that capitalizes on heritage while maximizing preservation. Finally, COADS creates an enormous database of virtual collections that can be used for research and education purposes long after the physical material is dispersed.COADS integrates the materials from private collections with previous site- and region-based analyses into a composite model of distribution of human activity on the landscape over time. Previous work constructed a mutually reinforcing model of transition from mobility to residential stability (i.e., more sedentary populations) concomitant with a shift to increasing focus on, and eventual domestication of, seed crops. COADS employs geometric morphometrics to explore: 1) the implications of sedentism through the predicted effects on tool shape and degree of toolstone curation; and 2) the nature of transition of technology from one "type" to another. COADS creates the biggest archive of private collections for a region. Through high resolution 3D and 2D scanning, COADS serves as a portable research and education resource for the public and scholars. Increasingly it is realized that prehistory is not accurately characterized by the major excavated sites. One must examine all parts of the landscape and multiple aspects of past cultural systems. Documenting private collections fills many of the gaps in the official record.