John F. Chamblee, Ph.D.

Database & Cartographic Design Portfolio

Arizona State Museum

From 2001 through 2006, I held Graduate Research Assistantships in archaeology at the Arizona State Museum. Although these assistantships included varying responsibilities, each provided professional development opportunities in the area of archaeological data management.

In 2001 and 2005, I helped teach the University of Arizona's archaeological field school. During the 2001 season, I designed the Marana Platform Mound database, a two-part Microsoft Access application consisting of a front-end user interface file (maranafe) and a back end data storage file (maranabe). This system, still in use today, integrates data from the 2001 season with legacy data from over a decade of previous work. In 2005, I designed and managed the work-flow and information systems for the Total Station data associated with precision surveys of Tumamoc Hill.

In 2002, I developed a database used by the editors of Latin American Antiquity to track all submitted publications and manuscript reviews for the journal. This database remained in use through at least 2007, when the editorship changed hands.

In 2004, I managed and upgraded the websites* for the for the Southwest Land Culture and Society Program (SWLCS) and developed a secure prototype management system for the SWLCS Southwest Information Gateway (SIG)*. This session-based, password protected system is reproduced with this portfolio. In order to provide user-level access to the SIG management tools, I adapted an open-source product called pAuthorize (developed by Patrick Barabe) for use in the SIG Admin application. I am still conversant with this product and could use it in a variety of contexts to provide user and group-level access control of database-driven web resources.

In 2004 and 2005, I created several custom augmentations of the Microsoft SQL Server-based Arizona State Site Files database (AZSITE*). These reporting applications helped AZSITE managers provide a one-stop solution capable of reproducing hard-copy archaeological site documentation for state agencies, the Bureau of Land Management, and the U.S. Forest Service. I built an additional application to manage site-level zooarchaeological data. The zooarchaeological data module also included functionality to minimize data entry errors. This was accomplished by enforcing the relationships defined by the taxonomic hierarchy in the animal kingdom through dynamically updated user input menus.