Research Links Database

Data

Archaeological Digital Data
Description: ADD is a website to host data from current historical archaeology excavation and digitization research projects in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Tennessee.
Colonial Encounters
Description: This project focuses on the Potomac Valley and synthesizes the results of decades of research by archaeologists and historians on sites occupied by Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans. Through close attention to materiality—including buildings, landscapes, and portable objects ranging from the quotidian to the exotic—the project examines the complex cultural terrain that emerged in the region. In the pages of this site you will find detailed summaries of over 30 sites, artifact and context databases, and images of important or unusual artifacts. All data, including the artifact databases, can be downloaded for the use of other scholars.
Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery
Description: Learn more about enslaved Africans and their descendants living in the Chesapeake, Carolinas, and Caribbean during the Colonial and Ante-Bellum Periods. Analyze and compare archaeological assemblages and architectural plans from different sites at unprecedented levels of detail. DAACS is a community resource, conceived and maintained in the Department of Archaeology at Monticello, in collaboration with the research institutions and archaeologists working throughout the Atlantic World.
Human Impacts Pollen Collection
Description: While many pollen reference collections emphasize indigenous regional, often arboreal taxa, the Human Impacts Pollen Collection focuses on taxa relating to peoples’ impacts on the environment and landscape. These include cultivated and ornamental plants, but also ruderals, segetals, exotics, and invasives, which are often, although not exclusively, forbs, grasses, and shrubby taxa. This collection of pollen reference materials provides a tool for helping to identify the pollen from these types of plants and reconstruct changing vegetation patterns. The collection contains plants relating to human activities in the Caribbean, Iceland, and elsewhere, but focuses primarily on the North American landscape within the last 500 years. However, some of these taxa were introduced from Eurasia, Africa, and Australia. As such, the development of a database of these materials provides information that complements regionally-based collections that are focused on indigenous vegetation. The key has several thousand images of pollen from about 800 specimens.
Maryland Archeobotany
Description:

This website offers a unique resource that centralizes Maryland’s archeobotanical data in a publicly-accessible and user-friendly format.
Project components include summaries of archaeological sites bearing archeobotanical data, a searchable database of archaeological plant remains and interpretive essays and resources on the history of Maryland’s landscapes.
These resources draw on decades of research in the state and reflect the current understanding of Maryland’s archeobotanical history. The growing emphasis on archaeological plant studies in our region is helping to paint a more complete picture of the complex relationships between humans and the natural world.

Maryland Unearthed
Description:

Maryland Unearthed provides access to many of the important archaeological collections maintained by the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Laboratory, the state's central curation facility.

Online NSW Grey Literature Database
Description:

NSW Archaeology On-Line is a sustainable digital archive of information about the archaeology and heritage of important cultural places in New South Wales. Stage 1 of the project makes a collection of previously unpublished 'grey-literature' reports discoverable, searchable and publicly accessible on-line for the first time. Most reports were created before mid-late 1990s in hard-copy format only. They document archaeological field survey, excavation and heritage assessment projects conducted under the NSW Heritage Act and are an important resource for research, education, heritage interpretation and management. Presentation of the archive is a partnership between University of Sydney Library and the Archaeology of Sydney Research Group. The University of Sydney Library provides access to the collection. Stage 1 was funded by a NSW Heritage Grant 2009-11.

Open Context
Description: Open Context reviews, edits, annotates, publishes and archives research data and digital documentation. We publish your data and preserve it with leading digital libraries. We take steps beyond archiving to richly annotate and integrate your analyses, maps and media. This links your data to the wider world and broadens the impact of your ideas.
tDAR
Description: The Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR) is an international digital repository for the digital records of archaeological investigations. tDAR’s use, development, and maintenance are governed by Digital Antiquity, an organization dedicated to ensuring the long-term preservation of irreplaceable archaeological data and to broadening the access to these data.

Material Culture

Chinese Material Culture Collection
Description:

The Chinese Material Culture Collection contains images of a variety of artifacts commonly found on archaeological sites and in museums documenting the Chinese migrant diaspora from the mid-19th through the early 20th century. The assemblage highlights artifacts from Chinese communities in Oregon and California in an effort to promote education and greater understanding of the role Chinese migrants played in the settlement and development of the American West.
For more than 50 years archaeologists have been working on sites associated with Chinese participation in the gold fields, railroad construction and maintenance, agriculture, logging industry, fisheries and canneries, and urban settlements. This collection was created as a means to standardize terminology, aid in artifact identification, and provide accurate information about the manufacture and function of a variety of everyday items used in early Chinese communities in the West.

Diagnostic Artifacts In Maryland
Description:

This site has been created to provide an introduction to some of the most significant types of datable artifacts recovered from archaeological sites in Maryland. The goal is to assist the professional archaeologist, and anyone else with an interest in Maryland archaeology, to recognize the objects typically found here, and to become familiar with the descriptive terms commonly used in this area. But many of these artifacts have a far broader geographical range than just Maryland, so we hope the website will be of use to a wide audience.

Electrical Porcelain Resource
Description: Jack Tod produced several excellent illustrated texts on Electrical Porcelain, and thanks to one of Mr. Tod’s longtime friends, Elton Gish, the SHA is pleased to announce that some of his works are available online to aid researchers and enthusiasts alike.
Florida Museum of Natural History Digital Type Collections
Description:

The Florida Museum of Natural History's on-line type collections of historic period archaeological ceramics (1492-1850) is a fully searchable digital resource available to archaeologists, museum curators, material culture specialists, and anyone interested in historic period ceramics.
The digital collection includes thousands of images of individual sherds, representing hundreds of different ceramic types. The site also includes an extensive searchable database of information about these specimens.

Historic Glass Bottle Identification
Description:

Goals of the website to enable the user to answer two primary questions about most utilitarian bottles and jars* produced in the United States (and Canada**) between the late 1700s and 1950s, as follows:

      What is the age of the bottle? (i.e., Bottle Dating)
      What type of bottle is it? (i.e., Bottle Identification, Typing or Typology)

Jamestown Rediscovery Explore the Artifacts
Description:

The items featured here are just some of the over 3 million objects recovered in the last 25 years of archaeology at the site. Some of these artifacts are on display at the Archaearium museum. Others are housed in our collections area, which includes a designated “Reference Collection” that holds one example of every type of object.

Jefferson Patterson
Description: Jefferson Patterson Park & Museum has developed web pages designed to make archaeological data easily available to researchers and the public. There are five different web sources available, ranging from artifact identification tools to artifact and paleobotanical databases. A short description and links are provided for each of these web resources. Also included is a link to the Jefferson Patterson Park & Museum searchable library catalog and information on accessing archaeological collections curated at the Maryland Archaeological Conservation Lab.
Jim Rock Historic Can Collection
Description: This Jim Rock Historic Can Collection contains images and information about the assemblage of historic cans assembled by Jim Rock (1942-2010) over his career, as well as pdfs of his related publications. The collection was digitized as part of a collaboration between the Southern Oregon University Laboratory of Anthropology and Hannon Library and includes a list of publications.
The Historical Japanese Ceramic Comparative Collection (HJCCC)
Description: The Historical Japanese Ceramic Comparative Collection (HJCCC) contains digital photographs and resources for identifying and describing Japanese ceramics manufactured during the Meiji, Taisho, and early Showa eras (roughly the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries). This collection provides researchers with comparative examples of Japanese ceramics that are found on North American archaeological sites. The HJCCC is intended to assist in identification of historical Japanese ceramics, to encourage the use of standardized terminology, and to promote further research.
Transferware Collectors Club
Description:

The Transferware Collectors Club is a tremendous resource for archaeologists and historians to identify 19th and 20th century pottery, including free online articles regarding manufactures, motifs, museum displays and a number of other topics. Access the free eBook online, “Queensware Direct from the Potteries U.S. Importers of Staffordshire Ceramics in Antebellum America, 1820-1860” by John A. Walthall formerly of the Illinois State Archaeological Survey. Staffordshire_ceramic_importers-ISAS (PDF)