Archaeology Data Service
ADS ONLINE - ISSUE 12 - From Discovery to Delivery - ISSN 1368-0560 | Front Page | Contents

Enter the ARENA ...

The ARENA project, Archaeological Records of Europe: Networked Access has been active since March 2002. Supported by the EU Culture 2000 programme it brings together partners from six European nations, who have responsibility for preservation and access for archaeological data. Partners include the ADS, Danish National Agency for Cultural Heritage, Museum Project in Norway, the Institute of Archaeology in Iceland, the Poznan Archaeological Museum and CIMEC, the Institute for Cultural Memory in Romania.

ARENA is a 'path-finding' project looking into a common European information architecture for archaeological data. The 'path-finding' centres on the construction of a web portal that will search across archaeological data held by the partners. This portal will allow access to common index records and detailed research data on large excavations such as Vorbasse and Danebury.

The project is a steep learning curve, so the partners need to communicate effectively with each other. However, it is not the purpose of ARENA to keep its research to itself: partners hold seminars highlighting issues raised and disseminating the lessons learned. ARENA held its first roundtable at the European Association of Archaeologists in Thessaloniki, bringing together eight EU-funded projects to present their work. This generated a considerable discussion regarding a network of European archaeology, first suggested by Henrik Jarl Hansen - one of the founders of ARENA - in 1992. Ten years since that first proposal, the number of projects working on different aspects information sharing was encouraging. ARENA will make an important contribution to this longer term vision.

For now, partners have decided on the data sets available and are ensuring that the research archives are technically robust and properly documented.

Dr Jon Kenny
jk18@york.ac.uk
For more details on ARENA , or to find out about future meetings, see the ARENA project web site at http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/arena/

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