Neolithic Settlements in Central Europe: Data from the Project 'Lifestyle as an Unintentional Identity in the Neolithic'

This repository contains data set submitted to Journal of Open Archaeology Data. The data set originated in course of the Czech Science Foundation project n. 19-16304S entitled Lifestyle as an unintentional identity in the Neolithic.

The data set comprises of over 2100 Neolithic settlement sites from Central Europe (mainly Czech Republic with small parts of Slovakia and Austria). Each site is is defined by spatial coordinates and information about relative chronology phase. The time span is 4900 BCE to 3300 BCE.

The data set consists of the following files:

• sites.csv – is a main list of sites with unique identifiers in the id field, id starting with B means the site is from the eastern part of the Bohemia section of the study area and in case of id starting with M the site is from the Morava river catchment. Field orig_id contains identifier by which the site is referenced in cited works and field site contains the site name;

• pot_traditions.csv – contains site ids, field chrono giving the general pottery tradition and field period listing occurence of the site in one of the nine time slices;

• pot_groups.csv – has same fields as the previous file with the difference in chrono field that contains information on detailed pottery groups;

• references.csv – list of references, where possible, the excavation reports are linked to their source in the Digital Archive of the Archaeological Map of the Czech Republic (https://digiarchiv.aiscr.cz/). Column ref_id is linked through file references_sites.csv to the database of sites in sites.csv file.

• references_sites.csv – connects files references.csv and sites.csv

Geodata (in S-JTSK / Krovak East North coordinate reference system):

• site_locations.gml and site_locations.xsd – settlement sites locations. The id field gives a unique identifier for each site, column accuracy gives how accurately the site location is defined, value 1 meaning accurate location (instrumentally measured), value 2 is precision in hundreds of meters, i.e. the site location is known by the local name, street name or so and value 3 means the location is not very accurate, in approx. 1 km range. The field surface is TRUE if the site is defined based on surface survey only and field altitude gives altitude in meters;

• study_area.gml and study_area.xsd – polygon giving the borders of the area where data was initially collected;

• regions.gml and regions.xsd – polygons giving the extent of the two studied regions, (1) eastern part of Bohemia and (2) Morava river drainage basin;

• raw_material_sources.gml and raw_material_sources.xsd – locations of raw material sources as points or lines. Points are based on places where prehistoric procurement activities are known or the outcrops of the given raw materials are present.  Lines give the border of the raw material occurrence in case of erratic flint or river courses, in which the raw materials can be procured. The rm column gives an abbreviated name of the raw material and type field is either l for chipped stone tools or p for polished stone tools.

Vocabularies:

• voc_periods.csv – contains period labels;

• voc_pot_traditions.csv – contains pottery traditions labels, where possible, field periodo_link maps the period to AMCR Periods Vocabulary at Periodo (http://n2t.net/ark:/99152/p0wctqt);

• voc_pot_groups.csv – contains pottery groups labels, same fields as previous file;

• voc_pot_groups_facets.csv – general labels for pottery groups;

• voc_raw_materials.csv – list of raw material abbreviations in the rm column of raw_material_sources.gml file with full names.