South Dakota State Historical Society
Archaeological Research Center

Resources at the Archaeological Research Center

The Archaeological Research Center has many resources available to researchers. This page serves as a general guide to what we have available online. Several documents are available in pdf format. Acrobat Reader, a pdf viewer, can be obtained free from Adobe.

Publications

Special Publications in Archaeology is an online series of general-interest reports about South Dakota Archaeology.

Research Reports is a series of technical reports highlighting aspects of archaeological research in South Dakota.

Repository Guidelines and Requirements

The State Historic Preservation Office requires that copies of all archaeological reports done in South Dakota under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act be submitted to the Archaeological Research Center. This insures that the state has a complete set of base data for researchers and cultural resource managers. We have compiled a guideline, Submitting Report Copies to the Archaeological Research Center, as an aid in preparing reports for submission.

Many researchers and institutions make use of the Center's repository to store collections and records. The Center staff has prepared Requirements for Submitting a Collection to the State Archaeological Research Center. It contains useful information on artifact conservation, cataloging, storage, and recordation methods.

Fees for Data Access and Services

The 2009 SD legislature directed that new fees be implemented for some of the Center's services and that existing fees be brought into line with costs. To that end, new regulation were adopted to implement those changes. They took effect January 1, 2010. These include:

• Box storage fees. Fees to store artifact collections remains unchanged. These are based on cubic feet. Processing fees to handle incompletely prepared collections have gone up.
• Collection maintenance fee. There is now an annual collection maintenance fee, based on cubic feet of storage.
• Curation agreements. There is now a fee to set up a curation agreement with the Archaeological Research Center.
• Loan processing. A set of rates was established to process collection loans.
• Archaeological permits. A new fee was set up to obtain an archaeological permit under the requirements of SDCL 1-20 or SDCL 34-27.
• ARMS database fees. A user fee was established to allow clients access to data housed at the Archaeological Research Center. This fee allows users to use in-house databases, records, GIS resources, and the online ARMS database. Users must fill out a user agreement to accompany the application for an account. A résumé for each user is also required.
• Record searches. The fee for staff members to conduct records searches for clients was adjusted.
• Other staff assistance. The hourly fee for other staff assistance was adjusted.
• Other fees. Fees were added or adjusted for providing hard copy maps or storage media.

Details on the fee structure are available from regulations posted by the legislature

Cataloging Software

Artifact collections at the Archaeological Research Center are cataloged using the HACS (Hierarchical Artifact Catalog System) utility. The catalog software is available in MS Access 2002 (XP) and in MS Access 2007 formats. Before you use it, be sure to clear the 'read only' box in the file properties. Read the instructions.

If the cataloging is being done for submission to the ARC repository, each set of data created by the utility should be named for the accession number (e.g. '99-0133.mdb', '03-0023.mdb'). Needless to say, only one accession should be used per file. The HACS program stores each catalog as a seperate database. It is able to open any older HACS catalog file or create new ones as needed.

Photos may be cataloged using the Photo utility, a database in MS Access 2000 format.

Site Form Software

The Archaeological Research Center Field Site Form is the manual used to record or update archaeological site information. It is available for download as a pdf file. The site form is available in MS Access 2000 format; site data can be entered, printed, modified, and exported to MS Word from Access. If you don't have MS Access, you can download a pdf version of the siteform.

Guidelines for Cultural Resource Surveys and Survey Reports, a publication of the South Dakota State Historical Society's State Historic Preservation Office, is available here.

The Archaeological Regions map for the State Plan is now available for download as an ArcView shapefile. Get it here. It is also available as a 1024x768 jpeg image, suitable for framing.