LibGuides: Anthropology How-to: Find Data : Data repositories (or Where to find Data?)

Anthropology and Archaeology specific data repositories

These repositories specialize in data created by anthropologists or archaeologists, and are very useful places to find data sets that you can use. This data may be numerical, or it may be in other forms: maps, photographs, interviews, etc. Some have curated subject headings and other standardized metadata, and some rely on natural language keyword searching.

It is useful to read the 'about' pages for each site before you begin, and also to review the help notes, to understand the best way to find useful data within these databases. Be brave, click through to view the data attached to the reports or textual components and assess the data itself, and what you can do with it (it it downloadable, in what formats, etc?).

All the World's Primates
Developed for students, researchers, and anyone interested in our closest relatives, All The World’s Primates illustrates the diversity of our taxonomic order. The foundation of the website is a relational database with contributions from more than 300 scientists, most of whom have done research on primates in their natural habitats.
Archaeology Data Service
The Archaeology Data Service supports research, learning and teaching with freely available, high quality and dependable digital resources. It does this by preserving digital data in the long term, and by promoting and disseminating a broad range of data in archaeology. The ADS promotes good practice in the use of digital data in archaeology, it provides technical advice to the research community, and supports the deployment of digital technologies. Hosted by the University of York, England.
Chaco Research Archive
The Chaco Research Archive is a collaborative effort to create an online archive and analytical database that integrates much of the widely dispersed archaeological data collected from Chaco Canyon from the late 1890s through the first half of the 20th century.
DAACS Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery
The Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery is a Web-based initiative designed to foster inter-site, comparative archaeological research on slavery throughout the Chesapeake, the Carolinas, and the Caribbean. Our goal is to help scholars from different disciplines use archaeological evidence to advance our historical understanding of the slave-based society that evolved in the Atlantic World during the colonial and ante-bellum periods.
The Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR)
tDAR is an international digital archive and repository that houses data about archaeological investigations, research, resources, and scholarship. Hosted by the University of Arizona, USA
Digital Repository of Ireland
The Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) is a national trusted digital repository (TDR) for Ireland’s social and cultural data. We preserve, curate, and provide sustained access to a wealth of Ireland’s humanities and social sciences data through a single online portal. The repository houses unique and important collections from a variety of organisations including higher education institutions, cultural institutions, government agencies, and specialist archives.
Dr Christopher Ruff
Dr Ruff's research explores how variation in skeletal morphology is related to mechanical forces applied during life. Many experimental and comparative studies show that the skeleton adapts to its mechanical environment, both developmentally and through evolutionary time, by altering its structural organization. Thus, using engineering principles, the preserved morphology of skeletal elements can be used to reconstruct past behavior and other characteristics such as body size and proportions.
Goldman Osteometric Database
The Goldman Data Set consists of osteometric measurements taken from 1538 human skeletons dating from throughout the Holocene.
Historic Environments Scotland
Historic Environment Scotland is the lead public body established to investigate, care for and promote Scotland’s historic environment. We lead and enable Scotland’s first historic environment strategy Our Place in Time, which sets out how our historic environment will be managed. It ensures our historic environment is cared for, valued and enhanced, both now and for future generations.
JOAD Dataverse
Datasets repository for the data papers published in the Journal of Open Archaeology Data (JOAD).
MorphoSource
Find, view, and download 3D data representing the world's natural history, cultural heritage, and scientific collections.
Data are contributed by museums, researchers, and scholars to share findings, increase impact, and improve access to material critical for scientific discovery and the advancement of human knowledge.
Open Context
Open Context is a free, open access resource for the electronic publication of primary field research from archaeology and related disciplines. Open Context's technologies focus on ease of use, open licensing frameworks, informal data integration and, most importantly, data portability. Sponsored by the Alexandria Archive Institute
Paleobiology Database
An online, non-governmental, non-profit public resource for paleontological data. It is organized and operated by a multi-disciplinary, multi-institutional, international group of paleobiological researchers. Its
purpose is to provide global, collection-based occurrence and taxonomic data for organisms of all geological ages, as well as data services to facilitate access to data for
independent development of analytical tools, visualization software, and applications of all types.
Primate Life Histories
This database contains individual-based life history data that have been collected from wild primate populations by nine working group participants over a minimum of 19 years. The purpose of collecting data of this type is to make comparative analyses that can shed light on the population dynamics and the social and ecological adaptations that have shaped both human and nonhuman primate evolution. Records in the database include mortality and fertility schedules across multiple primate taxa. The data are searchable and can be downloaded into csv format.
CanCoast
CanCoast is a geospatial database of the physical characteristics of Canada's marine coasts. It includes both feature classes that are not expected to change through time, and feature classes that are expected to change as climate changes. CanCoast includes: wave-height change with sea ice (early and late 21st century); sea-level change (early and late century); ground ice content; coastal materials; tidal range; and backshore slope. These are mapped to a common high-resolution shoreline and used to calculate indices that show the coastal sensitivity of Canada's marine coasts in modelled early and late 21st century climates.
Google Dataset Search
Dataset Search is a search engine for datasets.
Using a simple keyword search, users can discover datasets hosted in thousands of repositories across the Web.