Neotoma Exports

Neotoma exports provide Nordic pollen-site context from the Neotoma Paleoecology Database. The normalized layer combines stable site identity, location, collection summaries, source links, and explicit temporal semantics without converting site-level age coverage into sample-event chronology.

Current Governed Surface

The point layer contains 200 Nordic sites. Its temporal review separates the sites as follows:

Posture	Sites	Permitted reading
numeric interval	63	site-level BP coverage can participate in numeric interval comparison
numeric interval with caveat	107	numeric comparison retains a material qualification
contextual label only	5	display and group as temporal context, not numeric overlap
unresolved	25	no temporal comparison

In total, 175 sites carry BP age-range information, but the five contextual-only sites are not promoted into numeric comparability. None of the 200 sites has captured chronology rows in the current repository state. The available bounds are site-level pollen coverage spans, not sample-owned dates.

flowchart LR
    Sites["200 Neotoma sites"] --> Ranges["175 with BP age ranges"]
    Sites --> Unresolved["25 unresolved"]
    Ranges --> Numeric["63 numeric intervals"]
    Ranges --> Caveated["107 numeric intervals with caveats"]
    Ranges --> Contextual["5 contextual labels only"]
    Numeric --> Layer["qualified pollen context"]
    Caveated --> Layer
    Contextual --> Layer

Artifacts And Identity

• data/neotoma/normalized/nordic_pollen_sites.csv is the tabular normalized surface;
• data/neotoma/normalized/nordic_pollen_sites.geojson is the mapped point surface; and
• data/neotoma/review/temporal_review.{json,csv,md} exposes the temporal classification and its denominators.

The data/neotoma/normalized/ tree owns the repository representation used by publication, while data/neotoma/review/ owns its temporal fitness findings. Copies under docs/report/ are product members governed by their bundle manifests; they do not replace the normalized site identity, temporal posture, or review denominator.

record_id retains Neotoma site identity. Site name or coordinates are not safe substitutes: names can recur, coordinates can be revised, and one site can contain multiple collection units, datasets, samples, or taxa.

Temporal Contract

time_start_bp, time_end_bp, and time_mean_bp summarize site coverage only when the review supports them. The accompanying temporal-semantics object names evidence class, precision, comparability posture, window, provenance locator, and comparison note.

An interval overlap with a human or animal aDNA row means their declared windows intersect. It does not prove that pollen deposition and the dated individual represent the same event, locality process, or causal relationship.

Worked Record: Abborrtjärnen

Neotoma site 13338, Abborrtjärnen, is published at 14.45, 63.88333 in Sweden with a normalized range of 0-9815 BP. The record contains one collection unit, one dataset, 107 samples, and 94 taxa, yet the exported map still has one site feature. Those counts describe nested source content; they are not additional independent map observations.

Field	Governed reading
record_id: 13338	stable Neotoma site identity
0-9815 BP	site-level pollen coverage span
numeric_interval	numeric overlap is permitted under the retained caveat
midpoint 4908 BP	navigation summary, not a dated event
duration 9815 years	width of represented coverage, not sampling resolution
mid_holocene window	classification of the midpoint, not the full site's sole period

The wide interval intersects many narrower archaeological or aDNA intervals. Reporting every such intersection as contemporaneity would reward interval width rather than evidence specificity. A defensible comparison states that the site coverage spans overlap and retains both original intervals.

flowchart LR
    Site["Neotoma site 13338"] --> Content["1 collection / 107 samples / 94 taxa"]
    Site --> Span["0-9815 BP site coverage"]
    Content --> Feature["one published site feature"]
    Span --> Eligible["numeric overlap eligible"]
    Eligible --> Caveat["site span, not sample-event chronology"]

Reuse Contract

Carry the site identifier, source URL, geometry, collection counts, original age-unit labels, normalized bounds, temporal posture, caveats, and review version together. State whether an analysis uses all 200 sites, the 175 sites with BP ranges, the 170 numerically comparable sites, or only the 63 non-caveated numeric intervals.

Continue to Neotoma source guidance for acquisition and source semantics, maps for spatial comparison, and chronology guidance for cross-family time claims.