ArchaeoGLOBE Regions

This dataset contains documentation on the 146 global regions used to organize responses to the ArchaeGLOBE land use questionnaire between May 18 and July 31, 2018. The regions were formed from modern administrative regions (Natural Earth 1:50m Admin1 - states and provinces, https://www.naturalearthdata.com/downloads/50m-cultural-vectors/50m-admin-1-states-provinces/). The boundaries of the polygons represent rough geographic areas that serve as analytical units useful in two respects - for the history of land use over the past 10,000 years (a moving target) and for the history of archaeological research. Some consideration was also given to creating regions that were relatively equal in size. The regionalization process went through several rounds of feedback and redrawing before arriving at the 146 regions used in the survey. No bounded regional system could ever truly reflect the complex spatial distribution of archaeological knowledge on past human land use, but operating at a regional scale was necessary to facilitate timely collaboration while achieving global coverage. Map in Google Earth Format: ArchaeGLOBE_Regions_kml.kmz Map in ArcGIS Shapefile Format: ArchaeGLOBE_Regions.zip (multiple files in zip file) The shapefile format is a digital vector file that stores geographic location and associated attribute information. It is actually a collection of several different file types: .shp — shape format: the feature geometry .shx — shape index format: a positional index of the feature geometry .dbf — attribute format: columnar attributes for each shape .prj — projection format: the coordinate system and projection information .sbn and .sbx — a spatial index of the features .shp.xml — geospatial metadata in XML format .cpg — specifies the code page for identifying character encoding Attributes: FID - a unique identifier for every object in a shapefile table (0-145) Shape - the type of object (polygon) World_ID - coded value assigned to each feature according to its division into one of seventeen ‘World Regions’ based on the geographic regions used by the Statistics Division of the United Nations (https://unstats.un.org/unsd/methodology/m49/), with small changes to better reflect archaeological scholarly communities. These large regions provide organizational structure, but are not analytical units for the study. World_RG - text description of each ‘World Region’ Archaeo_ID - unique identifier (1-146) corresponding to the region code used in the ArchaeoGLOBE land use questionnaire and all ArchaeoGLOBE datasets Archaeo_RG - text description of each region Total_Area - the total area, in square kilometers, of each region Land-Area - the total area minus the area of all lakes and reservoirs found within each region (source: https://www.naturalearthdata.com/downloads/10m-physical-vectors/10m-lakes/) PDF of Region Attribute Table:  ArchaeoGLOBE Regions Attributes.pdf Excel file of Region Attribute Table: ArchaeoGLOBE Regions Attributes.xls Printed Maps in PDF Format: ArchaeoGLOBE Regions.pdf Documentation of the ArchaeoGLOBE Regional Map: ArchaeoGLOBE Regions README.doc