sites

21776 rows


Description

The Sites table stores information about sites or localities, including name, geographic coordinates, and description. Sites generally have an areal extent and can be circumscribed by a latitude-longitude box. However, site data ingested from legacy databases have included only point locations. The lat-long box can be used either to circumscribe the aerial extent of a site or to provide purposeful imprecision to the site location. Site location may be imprecise because the original description was vague, e.g. «a gravel bar 5 miles east of town», or because the investigators, land owner, or land management agency may not want the exact location made public, perhaps to prevent looting and vandalism. In the first case, the lat-long box can be made sufficiently large to encompass the true location and in the second case to prevent exact location.

Columns

Column Type Size Nulls Auto Default Children Parents Comments
siteid serial 10 √ nextval('ndb.seq_sites_siteid'::regclass)
collectionunits.siteid fk_collectionunits_sitesC
lakeparameters.siteid fk_lakeparameters_sitesC
sitegeopolitical.siteid fk_sitegeopolitical_sitesC
siteimages.siteid fk_siteimages_sitesC

An arbitrary Site identification number.
sitename varchar 128 √ null

Name of the site. Alternative names, including archaeological site numbers, are placed in square brackets, for example:
New Paris #4 Lloyd’s Rock Hole
Modoc Rock Shelter 11RA501
A search of the SiteName field for any of the alternative names or for the archaeological site number will find the site. Some archaeological sites are known only by their site number.
Modifiers to site names are placed in parentheses. Authors are added for generic sites names, especially for surface samples, that are duplicated in the database, for example:
Site 1 (Heusser 1978)
Site 1 (Delcourt et al. 1983)
Site 1 (Elliot-Fisk et al. 1982)
Site 1 (Whitehead and Jackson 1990)
For actual site names duplicated in the database, the name is followed by the 2-letter country code and state or province, for example:
Silver Lake (US:Minnesota)
Silver Lake (CA:Nova Scotia)
Silver Lake (US:Ohio)
Silver Lake (US:Pennsylvania)
longitudeeast float8 17,17 √ null

East bounding longitude for a site.
latitudenorth float8 17,17 √ null

North bounding latitude for a site.
longitudewest float8 17,17 √ null

West bounding longitude for a site.
latitudesouth float8 17,17 √ null

South bounding latitude for a site.
altitude float8 17,17 √ null

Altitude of a site in meters.
area float8 17,17 √ null

Area of a site in hectares.
sitedescription text 2147483647 √ null

Free form description of a site, including such information as physiography and vegetation around the site.
notes text 2147483647 √ null

Free form notes or comments about the site.
recdatecreated timestamp 22 timezone('UTC'::text, now())
recdatemodified timestamp 22 null
geog geography 2147483647 √ null

Indexes

Constraint Name Type Sort Column(s)
sites_pkey Primary key Asc siteid
ix_siteid_sites Performance Asc siteid
sitegeog_gix Performance Asc geog
sitenames_idx Performance Asc sitename

Relationships

Close relationships within degrees of separation