Archaeology Data Service
ADS ONLINE - ISSUE 13 - Interaction - ISSN 1368-0560 | Front Page | Contents

European Archaeology Archives: ARENA launches major new data sets

The ARENA project has been running for over a year now so it's time to update you on progress so far. The partners have met on five occasions at Heraklion, Copenhagen, Thessaloniki, Poznan and Vienna. Two of these meetings have also included workshop sessions at the EAA and CAA conferences. In addition to spreading the word about common European information architecture and the preservation of digital data the partners have been working away at preparing archives for the ARENA project.

The ARENA partners have each made available at least one archaeological archive that can be accessed via the ARENA website. The appearance online of the ARENA archives was announced at a workshop and poster sessions at CAA in Vienna.

Each archive represents the nature of the organisation that supplied it. ADS, the Danish Agency for Cultural Heritage and the Institute for Archaeology in Iceland have all made available excavation archives in the style familiar to users of the ADS archives. They give information about the projects in question and allow users to download archival data for their own use. These excavation archives represent some key sites: Vorbasse, Hjelm and Dankirke from Denmark, Hofstadir from Iceland and Cottam from the ADS. The ADS has also made available data from Martin Millet's Ager Tarraconensis field survey (the precursor to Ave Valley) and will soon be adding the Danebury archive.

Image of a paved stone circle from Egge in Norway.

A paved stone-circle (diameter 20 m) with a destroyed grave in the center from Egge in Norway. Dating from the Roman Iron Age (0-400 AD). Photo by: Vitenskapsmuseet

The diversity of the ARENA project partners is reflected in the other archives made available. cIMeC from Romania presented an annual catalogue of excavations carried out in Romania since 1983 and the Archaeological Repertory of Romania. The latter is an antiquarian card index record of research in Romania which is being digitised for ARENA. It includes a wide variety of maps, plans and watercolours of finds.

Image of excavations at Danebuy.

Work in progress: archives of excavations at Danebury in Hampshire.

The Poznan Archaeological Museum has made available an online version of the Kowalewko cemetery excavation report. To this they also hope to add an archive of images from the excavations at Biskupin in the 1930s.

Lastly the Museums Project in Norway has taken a landscape approach, using archives of historic fieldwork. They have taken as their subject area the sites in and around Hegge and Egge in the Trondheim fjord in Central Norway.

The ARENA archives are a key resource, and just as ADS receives many hits from educational establishments around the UK the ARENA archives are reported to be in action as a teaching aid in Iceland already.

The next task for ARENA is to push forward with the development of the interoperable portal. This will allow users to search SMR type records from the partners through a map interface by period or theme. Watch this space for developments!

John Kenny
jk18@york.ac.uk

The ARENA project is funded by the EU Culture 2000 programme. For more details on the project and archives, see http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/arena/

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