Standardized Osteological Database

An Osteological Database for Bioarcheologists

Summary

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 delibe ration 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-9121 552, 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.

NOTICE: The SOD software was written in FOXPRO for DOS, in 1994. This software WILL NOT RUN in a Microsoft WINDOWS environment! There are NO current plans to upgrade this software to the WINDOWS environment. The software is still available for downloading BUT will not run unless you have a computer running DOS 3.2!

Click here to download software.

Click here to view SOD instructional manual.

Project funded by: National Science Foundation