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Experiments with archaeological data.

PLEASE NOTE: This project is now abandoned.

I no longer have any involvement in archaeology, and I am not a member of the New Zealand Archaelogical Association.

The archaeography project was an experimental model of the NZ Archaeological Association's (NZAA) Site Recording Scheme (SRS). The project was active from 2012 until 2016, and was abandoned sometime in 2017. This comment was added 2021-11-14.

It is an engineering prototype, the purpose of which is to provide understanding of the problems involved with handling large volumes of information describing archaeological sites.

The Python code here expresses, in a Django web framework, some of the functions of an information system for handling the records in the SRS.

NOTE: There are NO DATA BELONGING TO THE NZAA present in this codebase.

This is a machine for handling archaeological site records. The intention is to provide a normalised relational database describing the NZAA Site Recording Scheme. This database includes a web interface, and provides a variety of functions for searching, sorting and viewing copies of the archaeological site records held in the SRS.

The problem being studied is how to extract the maximum value in knowledge from those records. It's about easy ways to find and view archaeological site records, ways of sorting and selecting them, and developing techniques for analysing them.

The immediate purpose is to to provide a machine for interacting with the records in the SRS, which permits the interrogation of the database as a whole. I wanted an easy way to view individual site records, to search the collection, and to compile lists of site records.

The project is a model of the SRS. It includes methods for preparing new site records, or updates to existing site records, for submission to the filekeeper. It is also intended to model processes by which a filekeeper may manage submitted records, assess them and accession them into the formal collection.

This project is experimental. It's overall purpose is to gain a greater understanding of the national archaeological dataset, by applying relational database techniques to it.

The code in this repository provides a website constructed in the Django framework. The website can be used to interact with a copy of the dataset drawn from the SRS.

The archaeography code provides a set of basic functions which can be performed on archaeological records.

1. Viewing the archaeological site record collection. This includes:

   • the ability to select subsets of the site record collection by geographic groupings such as region, territorial authority, NZAA recording region, or map sheet;

   • the ability to select records according to archaeological site type, period, ethnicity, or features recorded within;

   • viewing any individual site record in an efficient and intuative way, showing all associated documents, photos and files collected with it.

2. Compiling, editing and managing site update records.

   Providing mechanisims by which new site records, and site update records, can be compiled online. This implies a process, from creation and subsequent editing of a record, to it's submission to a filekeeper for assessment, and it's accession into the formal collection.

   This process is served by functions to sort and organise site update records, providing a means to control large numbers of records in a production-line. These functions are:

   • a place to record archaeological data associated with an existing site record, or a previously unrecorded one;

   • the ability to edit such records at the author's discretion;

   • a means by which many site update records may be staged, or sorted by urgency; and

   • a means by which a filekeeper can assess the record, change it as necessary, and then either accept it, or send it back to the author with a query attached.

3. Providing a test-bed for developing analytical techniques.

   This is necessarily the least specific function of the project. I aim to develop a normalised relational database structure on which any number of applications can be built.

The technical descriptions of the database, the data dictionary and other such documents are all included in the site manuals. These are available at /manuals/ from the project server.

Detailed, step-by-step instructions for installing the archaeography project code into a Django development environment are included in the INSTALL document.