Expanding the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery Research Consortium

FAIN: HAA-258826-18

Monticello (Charlottesville, VA 22902-0316)
Jillian E. Galle (Project Director: June 2017 to October 2025)
Worthy N. Martin (Co Project Director: August 2017 to October 2025)

Major infrastructure improvements to the multi-institutional Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery.

Over the past two decades, archaeologists have struggled to discover how the web can help them collaborate across institutional boundaries to generate accurate and commensurate data, share them publicly, and analyze them to advance our understanding of human history. This proposal from the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery, based at Monticello, offers linked social and digital strategies that can meet these challenges in the archaeological study of early-modern slave societies. The project seeks Level III funding to enhance proven open-source software (www.daaacrc.org) and training programs that provide our collaborators with flexibility in how they collect data and share it with diverse stakeholders. The project will optimize search and navigation on the DAACS website (www.daacs.org) to accommodate a 10-fold increase in the number of archaeological sites represented. The project would demonstrate how a core facility like DAACS can leverage collaboration among researchers working in diverse institutions.