Sonoma Historic Artifact Research Database

We developed our relational database Sonoma Historic Artifact Research Database — SHARD — to provide a consistent and (mostly) idiot-proof system to catalog artifacts from mid-19th to early-20th century archaeological sites and create data tables that facilitate intra- and inter-site comparisons.

While the ASC has been excavating urban sites since the 1970s, the impetus to create SHARD and its predecessors came from a series of hugely productive archaeological projects in the 1990s and early 2000s sponsored by the California Department of Transportation. These massive San Francisco Bay Area undertakings required a whole new way of recording and tabulating the nearly 1,000,000 individual items recovered from the excavations.

Bootleg versions of ASC's heretofore unnamed cataloging system have been circulating on the archaeological underground for several years. It has taken quite some time and a whole lot of volunteer effort to get to the point of releasing this definitive edition of SHARD  to the community.

Privacy Policy: We will not share or disclose your Contact Information with anyone. It will only be used to provide you with a link to SHARD downloads, notifications of Updates, and to keep track of the number of downloads.

SHARD was created by archaeologists Erica Gibson and Mary Praetzellis; Bryan Much helped with database design in Access. The Manual was written by Erica Gibson.

For access, please email asc@sonoma.edu.