ACE - The Archaeology of Contemporary Europe Project
Nathan Schlanger, INRAP
Stuart Jeffrey, ADS
Selected from more than a hundred applications to the EU, the "Archaeology in Contemporary Europe: professional practice and public outreach" project led by the Institut National de Recherches Archèologiques Prèventives (INRAP) and 13 partners from 10 European countries, including the ADS, began in November.
With financial support from the Culture Programme of the European Union, ACE is a five-year (2007-2012) international programme with four objectives. They are to explore the impact of archaeology in the modern world, compare archaeological practices, contribute to the recognition of archaeological professions and develop public outreach.
As well as Inrap and the ADS, this project brings together a wide range of European research centres, universities and cultural institutions:
- Römisch-Germanische Kommission (Germany)
- Faculty of Archaeology of the University of Leiden (Netherlands)
- Direction General of Archaeological Sites (Italy)
- Institute of Archaeology of the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain)
- Vlaams Instituut voor het Onroerend Erfgoed of Brussels (Belgium)
- Faculty of archaeology of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece)
- Institute of Prehistory of the University of Adam Mickiewicz of Poznan (Poland)
The ACE partners take a break from the inaugural meeting at the Collège de France in Paris.
Other partners include the Lithuanian Academy of Cultural Heritage, the Hungarian Office of Cultural Heritage, the archaeology department of the town of Saint-Denis, Culture Lab (Belgium) and the Kineon archaeological film festival (Belgium).
At their inaugural meeting on November 23 and 24, 2007, at the Collège de France in Paris, the partners defined their priorities such as research programmes, educational and travel grants, colloquia, seminars, publications and exhibitions.
The ADS contribution to the ACE project will be broad ranging, concerned mainly with the development of international standards and best practice, it will also potentially include an exemplar digital archive for project excavations. However, it is also under the auspices of the ACE project that the ADS will be developing and hosting a Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) registry service to allow broader and richer access to archaeological resources via web services. This complements the work that the ADS are proposing for the DARIAH project (see page 9) and also with the HEIRNET registry described in the Director's Foreword.
The next ACE meeting will be held at King's Manor, University of York in April.
ACE: http://www.ace-archaeology.eu
