*SHARD, *our artifact cataloging program, has just been posted.

http://www.sonoma.edu/asc/shard

Download it free, gratis, and for nothing, and start happy cataloging today!

*SHARD* provides a consistent and (mostly) idiot‐proof system of pull-down
menus to catalog artifacts/artefacts from mid‐19th to early‐20th‐century
archaeological sites and to create data tables that facilitate comparison.

Although we at ASC have been excavating urban sites since the 1970s, the
impetus to create *SHARD* 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 archaeological
community. Kind comments and suggestions are welcome. However, this has been
a labor of love so we're really not that interested in hearing how you would
have done it oh so much better if only we'd thought to ask.

*SHARD* is built on *MS Office Access 2003*, so you'll need that program to
run it. Everyone is free to use, reproduce, and adapt it to best suits their
needs. *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.

Regards,

Adrian Praetzellis

Sonoma State University

California, USA

Adrian DOT Praetzellis AT Sonoma DOT edu