The FC Database

Soon after we published our excavations at Fontéchevade, we put the database on this website. However, after some revisions to the website, the link to the database went away. Recently I decided to redo the database in the newer format that I use. The database was in Microsoft Access. I have now ported it to SQLite.

In making this effort, I took the opportunity to do some additional cleaning of the data. It wasn't much actually, but it means that this database differs in small ways from the previous Access database.

I would strongly recommend using this new version of the database going forward. As I find additional issues, I will clean this version.

If you publish these data, please cite the following publications:
2009. Chase, Philip G., André Debénath, Harold L. Dibble, and Shannon P. McPherron. The Cave of Fontéchevade: A New Investigation of the Site and Its Paleoanthropological Implications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

2009. Chase, P., A. Debénath, H. Dibble, and S. McPherron. “Introduction to the 1994–1998 Excavations.” In The Cave of Fontéchavade: Recent Excavations and Their Paleoanthropological Implications, edited by P. Chase, A. Debénath, H. Dibble, and S. McPherron, 28–62. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Reading SQLite

The following code demonstrates how R can be used to read the Fontéchevade SQLite database for plotting and analysis.

knitr::opts_chunk$set(echo = TRUE, warning = FALSE)

library(plyr)
library(dplyr)
library(RSQLite)
library(knitr)

Read the tables from the database into dataframes. Then merge the context and xyz tables together, and merge the lithics and context tables (so that Layer becomes part of the lithics table). Note that an example is not given here for the smallfinds, but the table is opened anyway here for example.

con = DBI::dbConnect(RSQLite::SQLite(), dbname = "data/fc.sqlite")
context = dbReadTable(con, "fc.context") %>%
  select(-unit, -idno)
xyz = dbReadTable(con, 'fc.xyz') %>%
  mutate(squid = squid_id)
lithics = dbReadTable(con, "fc.lithics") %>%
  mutate(squid = squid_id)
smallfinds = dbReadTable(con, "fc.small_finds")
dbDisconnect(con)

fc = join(context, xyz, by = c('squid'), type = 'right')
lithics = join(lithics, context, by = c('squid'), type = 'left')

Make a plot of the location of the items in the database using only Suffix = 0 points.

plot(fc$x[fc$suffix == 0], fc$y[fc$suffix == 0], asp = 1, main = 'Fontéchevade', xlab = 'X', ylab = 'Y', xlim = c(-200, 100), ylim = c(-200, 100))

Provide a breakdown of the basic types of lithics in the database.

kable(table(Dataclass = lithics$dataclass))

Dataclass	Freq
COMPFLAKE	2084
COMPTOOL	119
CORE	249
COREFRAG	37
CORETOOL	9
DISTFLAKE	134
DISTTOOL	10
MEDFLAKE	57
MEDTOOL	47
PROXFLAKE	876
PROXTOOL	26

Until I can make a better metadata summary, refer to the site publication:
2009. Chase, Philip G., André Debénath, Harold L. Dibble, and Shannon P. McPherron. The Cave of Fontéchevade: A New Investigation of the Site and Its Paleoanthropological Implications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

and especially Chapter 2 where we discuss how the data were collected:
2009. Chase, P., A. Debénath, H. Dibble, and S. McPherron. “Introduction to the 1994–1998 Excavations.” In The Cave of Fontéchavade: Recent Excavations and Their Paleoanthropological Implications, edited by P. Chase, A. Debénath, H. Dibble, and S. McPherron, 28–62. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Here also is a listing of the fields in the public tables.

Tables Summary

Context with 20329 records.
XYZ with 20815 records.
Refits with 2 records.
Lithic with 3648 records.
Fauna with 1037 records.
Small_Find with 1063 records.
Small_Find_Weights with 2001 records.
Granulometry with 14070 records.
Galet_Weights with 897 records.
Datums with 0 records.

Table name Context

Name	Type	Length
squid	CharField	14
collection	CharField	15
unit	CharField	6
idno	CharField	6
sector	CharField	50
analytical_layer	CharField	50
layer	CharField	50
code	CharField	25
date	DateField
excavator	CharField	50
year	CharField	5

Table name XYZ

Name	Type	Length
id	AutoField
squid	ForeignKey
suffix	IntegerField
x	FloatField
y	FloatField
z	FloatField

Table name Refits

Name	Type	Length
id	AutoField
squid	ForeignKey
unit	CharField	6
idno	CharField	6
counter	IntegerField

Table name Lithic

Name	Type	Length
id	AutoField
squid	ForeignKey
dataclass	CharField	20
raw_material	CharField	20
support	CharField	20
technique	CharField	20
form	CharField	20
fb_type	IntegerField
fb_type_2	IntegerField
core_type	CharField	20
biface_type	CharField	20
retouched_edges	IntegerField
retouch_intensity	CharField	20
tf_character	CharField	20
tf_surface	CharField	20
tf_location	CharField	20
platform_surface	CharField	20
platform_exterior	CharField	20
core_faces	IntegerField
platforms	CharField	20
platform_technique_1	CharField	20
platform_technique_2	CharField	20
scar_morphology	CharField	20
cortex	CharField	12
discard	CharField	20
edge_damage	CharField	20
alteration	CharField	20
proximal_removals	IntegerField
scar_length	DecimalField
length	DecimalField
width	DecimalField
thickness	DecimalField
platform_width	DecimalField
platform_thickness	DecimalField
small_pw	DecimalField
bulb	DecimalField
epa	IntegerField
weight	DecimalField

Table name Fauna

Name	Type	Length
id	AutoField
squid	ForeignKey
tentative_ID	CharField	20
genus	CharField	30
side	CharField	5
part	CharField	30
portion	CharField	30
segment	CharField	30
bone_type	CharField	30

Table name Small_Find

Name	Type	Length
id	AutoField
squid	ForeignKey
screen_size	CharField	20
platform_count	IntegerField
platform_weight	IntegerField

Table name Small_Find_Weights

Name	Type	Length
squid	ForeignKey
smalls_id	AutoField
weight	DecimalField

Table name Granulometry

Name	Type	Length
squid	ForeignKey
grain_id	AutoField
weight	DecimalField

Table name Galet_Weights

Name	Type	Length
id	AutoField
squid	ForeignKey
weight	DecimalField

Table name Datums

Name	Type	Length
id	AutoField
name	CharField	30
x	FloatField
y	FloatField
z	FloatField
notes	TextField

The Admin site allows direct access to the database tables and is available only to authenticated users. If you are part of the Fontéchevade reseach team, contact Shannon McPherron to obtain database credentials.

If you have credentials, click here to enter the admin site.