IATH NEWS
Chaco Research Archive Releases New Survey Data Set
February 2, 2012
In partnership with the Chaco Culture National Historical Park and the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, the Chaco Research Archive (CRA) now provides open access to an extensive collection of archaeological survey data. CRA has released Chaco Project Survey data to the public, including searchable site data, ceramic data, and original site forms.
Two major archaeological surveys have taken place in Chaco Canyon over the last 50 years: the Chaco Project Archaeological Survey, done in the early 1970s, and the Additional Lands Archaeological Survey (ALS), conducted in the 1980s. These two surveys inventoried cultural resources within the national park and areas subsequently added to the park. The data generated by these surveys will be useful to researchers interested in prehistoric and historic questions pertaining to the area immediately surrounding Chaco Canyon proper.
To launch this new data set, the CRA team digitized 3,317 survey forms describing the features and other characteristics of individual archaeological sites. These data span the last 8,000 years of human occupation in the Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, area.
The team also built searchable records, derived from original field documents, for more than 2,300 additional archaeological sites in the CRA database and added searchable ceramic artifact information for 1,434 sites. These data will enable researchers to ask new temporal and demographic questions about this fascinating region of the American Southwest.
Further information about this data launch can be found here.
