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SEAD

SEAD is one of the repository's main archaeology-context families. It helps readers ask a broader question than "where is the sample?" It helps ask, "what kind of archaeological setting surrounds this evidence?"

That role matters because the public product is not only a collection of points. It is also an interpretation surface. SEAD gives the repository a way to place pollen and ancient DNA inside a wider environmental archaeology context.

What SEAD Adds

SEAD is strongest when readers need broader archaeological context that is not limited to one national registry.

It is especially useful for:

  • environmental archaeology context around sites and regions
  • broader cross-regional comparison than a Sweden-only source can provide
  • public interpretation that needs cultural setting as well as biological or environmental evidence

For Sweden-specific lake work, SEAD is one of the fastest ways to see whether a promising pollen basin also sits inside a richer environmental-archaeology landscape. That matters when the repository is comparing many possible lakes and needs to distinguish "good pollen signal" from "good pollen signal plus surrounding archaeological context."

Temporal Posture In This Repository

The checked-in SEAD surfaces should be read as archaeology context with uneven chronology capture, not as a uniformly time-expanded archaeological layer.

In the current repository state:

  • the tracked Sweden-facing SEAD surface is primarily a site inventory
  • the checked-in raw capture does not yet supply numeric BP intervals across the same inventory in a way that can be promoted wholesale into chronology support
  • the lake-ranking workflow therefore uses SEAD chiefly for contextual density and only gives stronger chronology credit where numeric intervals are actually present

This is an honesty rule, not a downgrade. SEAD remains valuable, but the repository does not collapse "archaeology nearby" into "archaeology from the same period" unless the checked-in record state supports that claim.

The shared machine-readable posture for this family lives in:

  • data/source_spatiotemporal_posture_registry.json

What SEAD Does Not Do

SEAD is contextual support. It should not be read as direct proof of a single sample's identity, locality, chronology, or coordinates.

It does not replace:

  • aDNA recovery and review
  • pollen-derived environmental context
  • country and regional framing layers
  • local Swedish detail from RAÄ where that source is richer

It also does not mean that every SEAD-linked context point is temporally comparable with nearby pollen or ancient DNA. The repository keeps that limit explicit instead of smoothing it away.

Its job is to deepen interpretation, not to erase the difference between context and direct evidence.

How It Differs From RAÄ

SEAD and RAÄ are both archaeology families, but they do not have the same scope.

SEAD is the broader archaeology-context family. RAÄ is intentionally Sweden-specific and often denser inside Swedish and Nordic reading.

That means SEAD is usually the better first source when the question is broad archaeology context across places, while RAÄ is often the better first source when the question is specifically about Swedish detail.

Why SEAD Is A Real Collaboration Fit

SEAD is not only a dataset. It is also a Swedish environmental-archaeology infrastructure with broader Nordic and European reach. That makes it a strong fit when the repository needs to:

  • improve archaeology context around Sweden lake candidates
  • compare Swedish basins against wider Scandinavian and European context
  • strengthen metadata, reference links, and temporal legibility around tracked archaeology records

That fit is why the repository treats SEAD as a durable source family rather than as one more map decoration.

How It Appears In Public Outputs

SEAD helps the atlas and country outputs avoid reading as if ancient DNA and pollen were being interpreted in a cultural vacuum. It adds archaeology context that can travel beyond one local system, while still remaining honest about its contextual role.

In the Sweden lake evidence surfaces, SEAD does three narrower jobs:

  • it counts surrounding archaeology-context records within explicit distance bands
  • it helps distinguish lakes with similar pollen or aDNA support by the depth of their wider archaeology setting
  • it strengthens chronology-aware comparisons only when checked-in numeric BP intervals are actually available

If You Need The Repository-Owned Records

The family-owned normalized outputs live under:

  • data/sead/normalized/
  • data/sead/review/temporal_review.json
  • data/source_spatiotemporal_posture_registry.json

The current public source and infrastructure entry points live at:

  • https://www.sead.se/
  • https://browser.sead.se/

If you want the deeper interpretation model behind this family, continue to the SEAD handbook.