ARIADNEplus : Advanced Research Infrastructure for Archaeological Data Networking in Europe

The project will run from January 1, 2019 to December 31, 2022 (4 years). Inrap was represented at the project's kick off meeting which took place in Prato, at the PIN-University of Florence, from 11 to 14 February 2019.

The Project

ARIADNEplus is the continuation of the successful ARIADNE project (2013-2017) for the integration of European archaeological repositories, which created a searchable catalogue of datasets including unpublished reports, images, maps, databases and other kinds of archaeological information accessible online.

The ​Aim

The project does not aggregate or move data, but only the metadata of the datasets, which are maintained and controlled by their owners. At present, about two million datasets have been catalogued, corresponding to a huge amount of information as each dataset may comprise, for example, an entire report with related images, drawings, or a complete database including thousands of individual records. The catalogued content types range from individual finds to monuments and sites inventories and from the report of one single intervention to the results of a long-term archaeological mission. ARIADNEplus will update existing data in the ARIADNE Portal, extend ARIADNE in geographic and temporal coverage, and in the range of topics addressed, now incorporating additional information about scientific analyses. It will also provide services to further process and re-use those data.​

The Catalogue

The ARIADNE catalogue is searchable according to the three facets of “when” (time), “where” (space), “what” (object) and keywords drawn from controlled vocabularies. Searching provides a list of the datasets corresponding to the selection criteria with summary information about their content and a link to the source data, which can thus be accessed by the user according to the rules established by the content owner.

Partners

The 41 ARIADNEplus partners come from 23 European countries, plus 4 international partners. ARIADNEplus is funded to support researchers; but we believe it may be important and useful also for heritage agencies and managers.