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Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies

University of Arkansas

Standardized Osteological Database

Home » Research » Archaeology/Historic Preservation » Archaeological Informatics » Standardized Osteological Database

The Native American “Graves Protection and Repatriation Act” was approved on November 16, 1990. This law directs all museums and laboratories with in the United States to evaluate, and inventory their human skeletal collections and determine which can be linked to existing tribes, communicate that information and follow the wishes of the tribes regarding those collections. With this mandate in mind, In 1990, the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago received support from the National Science Foundation to convene a seminar/workshop to develop standards for collecting data from human skeletal remains scheduled to be repatriated. The deliberation of the participants resulted in a set of recommendations published as

Standards For Data Collection From Human Skeletal Remains Volume, Editors: Jane E. Buikstra and Douglas H. Ubelaker and Jonathan Haas.

Realizing that collection and management of these osteological data from potentially large collections of skeletons requires computerization, the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies, with support from the National Science Foundation Grant DBS-9121552, developed a database application called the Standardized Osteological Database or SOD from these recommended standards with the ultimate goal of stimulating a national osteological data archive and research resource.

SOD is free-standing relational database application developed using Microsoft FoxPro Relational Database Management System.

The resulting software can be downloaded via the Internet from here or is available, at minimum cost, from the following address:

Dr. Jerome C. Rose
Department of Anthropology
University of Arkansas
Old main 330
Fayetteville AR 72701
Phone: 501-575-5247
Email: Turn on JavaScript!

Project funded by: National Science Foundation

For additional information contact about this work, please contact Dr. Jerome C. Rose at Turn on JavaScript! or Bob Harris at Turn on JavaScript!.