Digital Antiquity and tDAR Goals

Digital Antiquity (http://tdar.org/confluence/display/DIGITAQ/Home) is a collaborative organization devoted to enhancing access to and preservation of the digital records of archaeological investigations.  Digital Antiquity is a multi-institutional organization operated collaboratively with the University of Arkansas, Pennsylvania State University, the SRI Foundation, the University of York's Archaeology Data Service, and Washington State University.  Based at Arizona State University, Digital Antiquity is sponsored and supported jointly by the School of Human Evolution and Social Change (Anthropology) and the Arizona State University Libraries.

The Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR; http://www.tdar.org\) is the digital repository used by Digital Antiquity.   The Digital Antiquity initiative and tDAR are funded by grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and by the National Science Foundation (0433959). Planning grants were funded by NSF (0624341) and the Mellon Foundation.

Digital Antiquity aspires to provide tDAR as a trusted digital repository for archaeology data. This digital repository has been developed to include databases and spreadsheets, reports and other documents, images, and other kinds of digital archaeological information.  The repository and associated software currently are in a beta version, so development of this version is ongoing.  Digital Antiquity is seeking organizations interested, able, and willing to work as partners in the further development and enhancement of tDAR.

Digital Antiquity has the goals of: (1) advancing archaeologists' ability to engage in synthetic and comparative research;  (2) broadening and making more efficient the access to archaeological data;  and, (3) maintaining  the long-term utility, accessibility, and preservation of irreplaceable primary data in the face of increasing amounts of digital data and rapidly changing technology.