Later Prehistoric Pottery Gazetteer

Graeme Earl, Elaine Morris, Sarah Poppy, Keith Westcott, Timothy C. Champion, 2007. https://doi.org/10.5284/1000013. How to cite using this DOI

Digital Object Identifiers

Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) are persistent identifiers which can be used to consistently and accurately reference digital objects and/or content. The DOIs provide a way for the ADS resources to be cited in a similar fashion to traditional scholarly materials. More information on DOIs at the ADS can be found on our help page.

Citing this DOI

The updated Crossref DOI Display guidelines recommend that DOIs should be displayed in the following format:

https://doi.org/10.5284/1000013
Sample Citation for this DOI

Graeme Earl, Elaine Morris, Sarah Poppy, Keith Westcott, Timothy C. Champion (2007) Later Prehistoric Pottery Gazetteer [data-set]. York: Archaeology Data Service [distributor] https://doi.org/10.5284/1000013

Data copyright © Dr Graeme Earl unless otherwise stated

This work is licensed under the ADS Terms of Use and Access.
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Resource identifiers

Digital Object Identifiers

Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) are persistent identifiers which can be used to consistently and accurately reference digital objects and/or content. The DOIs provide a way for the ADS resources to be cited in a similar fashion to traditional scholarly materials. More information on DOIs at the ADS can be found on our help page.

Citing this DOI

The updated Crossref DOI Display guidelines recommend that DOIs should be displayed in the following format:

https://doi.org/10.5284/1000013
Sample Citation for this DOI

Graeme Earl, Elaine Morris, Sarah Poppy, Keith Westcott, Timothy C. Champion (2007) Later Prehistoric Pottery Gazetteer [data-set]. York: Archaeology Data Service [distributor] https://doi.org/10.5284/1000013

Overview

Summary of the Data Model

The collection is essentially made up of three sets of related data:

  • The collection details which are present for each collection
  • The provenance (collection site) data also present for each collection
  • The published details present only for published sites

It is possible that one collection could be made up of material from more than one site. It is also possible for one site to yield more than one collection; the same site could be re-excavated and produce a second collection. Similarly a collection could be published in more than one publication and a publication could cover more than one collection. This results in there being many-to-many relationships between collections and sites and between collections and publications. However, although a collection could be included in multiple bibliographic references the published details of that collection must be constant - the condition of the pottery or the associated non-ceramic items are not dependant upon the reference but are intrinsic qualities of the collection. There is therefore an optional one-to-one relationship between the collection and the published details of that collection plus an optional many-to-many relationship between the collection and the bibliographic reference.

Within the main categories of data collection, site, and published details there are also multiple relationships between the category and some of the attributes. For example a collection may have been amassed as a result of a number of different methods of recovery, casual pick-up, systematic field walking and excavation perhaps. Thus there is a one-to-many relationship between collections and their recovery method. The various one-to-many relationships within the database are directly discernible from the data collection forms in which multiple boxes are present for some of the entries.

Within the data there are therefore a number of different relationships between the elements:

  • optional relationships where data may or may not be present (published details, parish, etc.)
  • one-to-many relationships (associated pottery, associated non-ceramics, etc.)
  • many-to-many relationships (site, bibliographic reference)

The relationships between the data items describing a collection can be formalised as a data model showing the relationships and their types between all of the data items.

Implementation of the Data Model as a Database

The database is implemented as a number of tables based on the data model. The main part of the data is contained in four major tables - Collection, Sites, Published Details and Bibliography. Two link tables deal with the many-to-many relationships between collections and sites and collections and references. Nine tables hold the various one-to-many relationships. One table holds expansions of the surveyor´s initials along with their survey areas. Fifteen tables hold the explanations of the codes for the coded database fields.

All tables are keyed, that is there is a single field with a unique value or a pair of fields which combine to form a unique value defined as unique and used by the database manager to index the records. Where possible the key is constructed from primary database data. The four major tables, however, have an arbitrary numeric field as a primary key because there is no guarantee that any combination of fields in the tables will be either present or unique. The keys form links between the tables thereby establishing the relationships between the records in the various tables.

The structure of the database is illustrated in the Entity Relationship Diagram below - which shows the table and attribute names and also the nature of the links between the tables:

Thumbnail of Entity Relationship diagram
Entity Relationship diagram
Entity Relationship diagram
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Entity Relationship diagram (111Kb)

Two types of cascaded updates are used between the tables. Links from look-up tables are configured to cascade updates only. All other one-to-many links are configured to cascade both updates and deletes.




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