The Digital Archaeological Archive of Chesapeake Slavery
Experience shows that the digital preservation projects are most effective when there are close links to an expert community. This invited article introduces one such project which is taking the long view.
The Digital Archaeological Archive of Chesapeake Slavery (DAACS) is a web-based initiative designed to foster inter-site, comparative archeological research on slavery in the United States with a focus on the greater Chesapeake region of Virginia. The goal of DAACS is to help scholars from different disciplines use archaeological evidence to advance historical understanding of the slave-based society that evolved in the Chesapeake during the colonial and ante-bellum periods. It also serves as a model for the use of the Web to foster new kinds of collaboration and data sharing among scholars.
Based at Monticello, the museum that interprets the life of Thomas Jefferson, and funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, DAACS provides unprecedented access to fine-grained quantitative information on artifacts, faunal remains, the stratigraphic and spatial contexts in which they were found, archaeological site plans, stratigraphic sections of site features, and images of artifacts. These data, along with supporting historical background material, are freely available to researchers, students, and others via the Web.
The heart of DAACS is a relational (SQL) database that contains a wide array of information from multiple archaeological sites where enslaved Africans and their descendents lived and worked. DAACS data systemically describes both artifacts and the archaeological contexts from which they were excavated. DAACS staff use a single set of classification and measurement protocols to record the data. This makes possible seamless quantitative analysis of assemblage variation across multiple sites. It also allows researchers using DAACS data to discover previously unknown spatial and temporal trends, to recognize sitespecific departures from them, and to more effectively evaluate hypotheses about the causes of these archaeological patterns.
Site plan from the DAACS website
DAACS is a community resource, built and maintained by the Department of Archaeology at Monticello, in collaboration with Colonial Williamsburg, the James River Institute for Archaeology, University of Mary Washington Center for Historic Preservation/Robert E. Lee Memorial Association, Mount Vernon, Poplar Forest, the William and Mary Center for Archaeological Research and the Department of Anthropology, College of William and Mary. Faunal remains are analyzed in the Zooarchaeological Laboratory at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. DAACS staff prepare feature summaries, stratigraphic analyses, and intrasite chronologies. Site research summaries are developed with the help of the institutions and archaeologists who curate the collections involved. In addition, an Archive Steering Committee of over 30 archaeologists and historians are also directly involved with the Archive's design and development.
DAACS is an ongoing project, with new data added to the archive regularly. Currently complete archaeological data from ten sites is available through the Archive website. Data from an additional five sites will be added to the Archive by December and five more will be completed by March 2005. In early 2005, archive staff, in consultation with Steering Committee members, will choose new sites for inclusion in the archive on the basis of their research potential.
Jillian Galle
jgalle@monticello.org
DAACS website http://www.daacs.org
