The CC Database

Harold Dibble and I (1997) initially published the Combe-Capelle Bas data on CD. After a while we posted a copy of the database here on the OSA website. Recently, at the request of the National Museum in Les Eyzies where the Combe-Capelle Bas collection is curated and to help with the publication of the Abri Peyrony excavations, I recently remade the Combe-Capelle database. To do this I went back to original dBase III files from 1993 and to the Combe-Capelle Microsoft Access database that we used at Abri Peyrony. The new database is SQLite.

In making this effort, I took the opportunity to do some additional cleaning of the data. I was rather aggressive in deleting records from the database when there were duplicates (cases with the same Unit and ID number) that could not be resolved. I also fixed the dates and excavator names in the Combe-Capelle Bas excavation database (meaning that I went to the 1993 database to recover this information).

So while the Combe-Capelle Bas database has been published several times already, I would strongly recommend using this version of the database going forward. The differences are not great in the larger scheme of things, but these data are a bit cleaner.

If you publish these data, please cite the following publications:
1997. Harold L. Dibble and Shannon P. McPherron. "The Making of Combe-Capelle on CD ROM." Journal of Field Archaeology 24: 59-66.
1996. Harold L. Dibble and Shannon P. McPherron. A Multimedia Companion to The Middle Paleolithic site of Combe-Capelle Bas (France). University Museum Press. Philadelphia.
1995. Harold L. Dibble and Michel Lenoir. The Middle Paleolithic site of Combe-Capelle Bas (France). University Museum Monograph 91. Philadelphia.

Reading SQLite

The following code demonstrates how R can be used to read the Combe-Capelle Bas 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/ccbas.sqlite")
context = dbReadTable(con, "cc.context") %>%
  select(-unit, -idno)
xyz = dbReadTable(con, 'cc.xyz') %>%
  mutate(squid = squid_id) %>%
  select(-squid_id, -unit, -id)
lithics = dbReadTable(con, "cc.ccbas_lithics") %>%
  mutate(squid = squid_id) %>%
  select(-squid_id, -unit, -id, -idno)
smallfinds = dbReadTable(con, "cc.ccbas_smallfinds")
dbDisconnect(con)

cc = 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(cc$x[cc$suffix == 0], cc$y[cc$suffix == 0], asp = 1, main = 'Combe-Capelle Bas', xlab = 'X', ylab = 'Y')

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

kable(table(Dataclass = lithics$dataclass))

Dataclass	Freq
BIFACE	6
BIFFRAG	2
COMPFLAKE	3081
COMPTOOL	741
CORE	380
COREFRAG	278
DISTFLAKE	1089
DISTTOOL	210
MANUPORT	35
MEDFLAKE	1689
MEDTOOL	400
PROXFLAKE	1194
PROXTOOL	157
RETFLAKE	1
ROGNON	67
SHATTER	1035

Until I can make a better metadata summary, refer to the site publication:
1995. Harold L. Dibble and Michel Lenoir. The Middle Paleolithic site of Combe-Capelle Bas (France). University Museum Monograph 91. Philadelphia.

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

Tables Summary

Context with 29411 records.
XYZ with 39077 records.
CCBASLithic with 10365 records.
CCBASSmallfind with 4018 records.

Table name Context

Name	Type	Length
collection	CharField	10
squid	CharField	12
unit	CharField	10
idno	CharField	10
layer	CharField	20
analytical_layer	CharField	20
layer_original	CharField	20
code	CharField	11
excavator	CharField	20
bucketvol	FloatField
year	IntegerField

Table name XYZ

Name	Type	Length
id	AutoField
squid	ForeignKey
unit	CharField	10
idno	CharField	10
suffix	IntegerField
prism	FloatField
x	FloatField
y	FloatField
z	FloatField
notes	TextField
date	DateTimeField
recordcounter	IntegerField

Table name CCBASLithic

Name	Type	Length
id	AutoField
squid	ForeignKey
unit	CharField	10
idno	CharField	10
dataclass	CharField	12
technique	CharField	8
form	CharField	11
cortex	CharField	8
alter	CharField	14
edgedamage	CharField	9
fbtype1	CharField	6
fbtype2	CharField	4
fbtype3	IntegerField
scarmorph	CharField	8
retedges	CharField	3
retintense	CharField	8
reprise	CharField	8
length	FloatField
width	FloatField
maxwidth	FloatField
thick	FloatField
weight	FloatField
platsurf	CharField	11
platext	CharField	14
platwidth	FloatField
platthick	FloatField
extsurface	CharField	8
exttype	CharField	7
plattech	CharField	13
platang	FloatField
material	CharField	20
multiple	CharField	4
shape	CharField	10
support	CharField	7
surfpct	FloatField
proxremovs	FloatField
prepplats	FloatField
flakdirect	CharField	13
scarlength	FloatField
scarwidth	FloatField
label	CharField	11

Table name CCBASSmallfind

Name	Type	Length
id	AutoField
squid	ForeignKey
unit	CharField	10
idno	CharField	10
coarse_stone_wt	FloatField
coarse_fauna_wt	FloatField
fine_stone_wt	FloatField
fine_fauna_wt	FloatField

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

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