rintchron provides an R interface to IntChron, an indexing service and exchange format for radiocarbon dates and other chronological data (Bronk Ramsey et al. 2019). It includes a user friendly interface for querying databases indexed by IntChron, as well as lower level functions for interacting directly with the IntChron API.

For an introduction to querying IntChron’s databases see the basic usage vignette. For advanced users, low level functions for interacting with the IntChron API directly are described in the IntChron API vignette.

Installation

rintchron has not yet been released on CRAN. You can install the development version from GitHub using the remotes package:

# install.package("remotes")
remotes::install_github("joeroe/rintchron")

Usage

Use intchron() to query databases indexed by IntChron. You can refine the query by database (use intchron_hosts() to see what’s available) and optionally by country and site. For example, to download records from Jordan in the ORAU and NERC Radiocarbon Facility databases:

library("rintchron")

# List available databases
intchron_hosts()
#> # A tibble: 5 x 2
#>   host     database                            
#>   <chr>    <chr>                               
#> 1 egyptdb  Egyptian Radiocarbon Database       
#> 2 intimate INTIMATE Database                   
#> 3 nrcf     NERC Radiocarbon Facility (Oxford)  
#> 4 oxa      Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit 
#> 5 sadb     Southern Africa Radiocarbon Database

# Query IntChron
intchron(c("oxa", "nrcf"), countries = "Jordan")
#> # A tibble: 156 x 19
#>    record_site record_country record_name record_longitude record_latitude
#>    <chr>       <chr>          <chr>                  <dbl>           <dbl>
#>  1 Araq ed-Du… Jordan         Araq ed-Du…             32.3            35.7
#>  2 Ayn Qasiyah Jordan         Ayn Qasiyah             36.8            31.8
#>  3 Ayn Qasiyah Jordan         Ayn Qasiyah             36.8            31.8
#>  4 Ayn Qasiyah Jordan         Ayn Qasiyah             36.8            31.8
#>  5 Ayn Qasiyah Jordan         Ayn Qasiyah             36.8            31.8
#>  6 Ayn Qasiyah Jordan         Ayn Qasiyah             36.8            31.8
#>  7 Azraq 31    Jordan         Azraq 31                36.8            31.8
#>  8 Azraq 31    Jordan         Azraq 31                36.8            31.8
#>  9 Azraq 31    Jordan         Azraq 31                36.8            31.8
#> 10 Burqu' 02   Jordan         Burqu' 02               37.8            32.7
#> # … with 146 more rows, and 14 more variables: series_type <chr>,
#> #   labcode <chr>, longitude <dbl>, latitude <dbl>, sample <chr>,
#> #   material <chr>, species <chr>, d13C <dbl>, r_date <int>,
#> #   r_date_sigma <int>, qual <chr>, F14C <dbl>, F14C_sigma <dbl>, refs <chr>