| ADS ONLINE - ISSUE 15 - Making History - ISSN 1368-0552 | Front Page | Contents |
The 'Vasile Pârvan' Institute of Archaeology in Bucharest started half a century ago (in 1949 - 1950) the documentation for the Archaeological Repertory of Romania (RAR). It resulted in an important amount of paper cards bound together in files, arranged topographically on regions, districts and localities, according to the administrative organisation of the time. The activity stopped in 1956 due to lack of funding. The paper archive has never been published, although scholars working for territorial archaeological repertories consulted the archive during their preliminary documentation. The project had the ambition to record any mention of archaeological discovery in the known literature back to the 18th century as well as the unpublished field surveys. The result was a rather heterogeneous bunch of information. Despite that, the Archaeological Repertory of Romania has become a myth. The legend of a unique and valuable information content together with the very restricted and selective access to it induced the idea that the archive is a must for any attempt to do an archaeological inventory, in any part of the country.
During the past fifty years, the only intervention upon the archive was done in 1968, when the director of the Institute, the late Professor D.M. Pippidi initiated the up-dating of the location information according to the new administrative organisation of Romania (from 1965), in forty one counties instead of districts and regions. The manuscript cards were typed - with no further checking of the quality and correctness of the content. The regions and districts for each locality or place of discovery were converted into the correspondent counties. Then, silence again, although from time to time the idea of bringing up to date and publishing the repertory came into discussion, with no further action. The cards yellowed, the ink paled, and passing of time made the up-dating and critical interpretation of the archive more and more difficult.
In the meantime, the county museums started to publish county repertories - a valuable undertake, although the methodology, content and illustration quality was sometimes to be blamed. Many of them included information extracted from the RAR archive, either citing it or not (as in the Archaeological Repertory of Cluj county). Only one third of the Romanian territory was covered. For the older ones, published in the 1970s, updating is needed. The future progress in the development of a modern National Archaeological Record cannot be done without including previous undertaking. Being responsible for the National Archaeological Record of Romania, CIMEC - The Institute for Cultural Memory in Bucharest proposed to the management of the Institute of Archaeology to digitise the archive and make it available for further research by publishing in digital format. The same year CIMEC became a partner in the European project ARENA under Culture 2000 Programme (http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/arena). European funding and encouragement were very important for the development of the project.
The project of digitising the RAR archive started in 2001, following a co-operation agreement between the Institute for Cultural Memory and the Institute of Archaeology. It aims at critically extracting the basic information out of the manuscript into a database (location, site type, period, and bibliographic reference), and scanning the originals for digital archiving. A working group proposed the data model. A database application (Access 2000) was designed for the aims of the project. The Institute of Archaeology is responsible for cataloguing, and CIMEC is responsible for the database maintenance, scanning of the original cards, image processing, and inscribing them on CD-ROMs. At least one copy is stored in each location.
An image from the Arhiva Dimitrie C. Butculescu, part of the Romanian Arhive digitale de arhealogie available through the ARENA Project. Image courtesy of CIMEC
The database will act as a search index, and the user has also the possibility to read the original cards on screen. A team of young researchers of the Institute of Archaeology extract and enter the information into the database, while the equipment, the software application, the technical assistance and the scanning of cards is provided by CIMEC. The result of this enterprise will be a digital archive with searching facilities, on CD-ROMs, suitable for reference, research and further study, updating and dissemination. An index of the RAR archive is going to be published in a volume. The Ministry of Culture and Religious Affairs, through the Archaeology Direction, finances the project as part of the National Archaeological Record. At present there are over 5,500 records in the RAR database (5,522 site records, 4,621 localities, 1,769 assemblies, 831 complexes, 6,970 finds, 14,954 bibliographic references) and 3,000 cards are scanned, which represent some 40% of the archive.
The project followed several stages. The first operation was to inventory the archive. Nobody knew before if we have 100,000 or 50,000 pages. After the identification and recording of the localities for each county, we could establish the volume of information: there were 32,000 documents, covering 4,600 localities. A general statistical table allowed for the first time to get an image of the content of the archive, on counties and localities. Two months after the work started, we solved the enigma of the amount of cards and gave identification numbers to each card page, for reference. At CIMEC, the localities and areas of discoveries were identified in the official file of the administrative organisation in Romania (SIRUTA), and unique administrative entity identification codes were provided.
The second operation was to start, in parallel, the scanning of the text archive and the extraction and recording of its basic content, with the purpose of creating an index database. What are the expected results?
The project is neither spectacular nor a masterpiece of technology. It rather illustrates what we should do and could do with a low budget in order to save, bring back to the public eye and facilitate contemporary access to a work done long ago, with public money too.
Other documents in the historical archive of the Institute wait for digitisation. Most of them have never been published, are difficult to study, and in a poor state of conservation. We scanned selected text documents, drawings; museum inventories, and surveys information such as:
A large selection of documents are available on the Web (http://archweb.cimec.ro/Digitalarchives/Index.htm). They belong to the history of Romanian and European archaeology. They are also a source of information for reference and present days research.
Digital archiving is a new field of activity with a great potential. Research and co-operation at a national and international scale is going to improve the methods, the tools, and the standards needed to gain the expected benefits for archaeology in saving, preserving, facilitating access, and publishing the most significant archives.
Irina Oberländer-Târnoveanu
CIMEC - Institute for Cultural Memory
irina@cimec.ro
For more information on the ARENA Project see: http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/arena
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© ADS 1996-2012 Edited by
Kieron Niven, email
Monday, 08 August 2005
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