Common Ground. A research platform for digitized archaeological collections and archives at the Swedish Institutes in Athens, Rome and Istanbul.
Common Ground unites the Swedish Institutes in Athens, Istanbul and Rome in the creation of a joint digital platform for Swedish archaeological research in the Mediterranean. Through intensive inventory and registration work, material from Swedish archaeological projects in Greece, Italy and Turkey, including finds and significant documentation from the important excavations in Asea and Kalaureia (Greece), Acquarossa and San Giovenale (Italy), and Labraunda (Turkey), will be made available to the international scholarly community. Searches by chronology, material category and provenance provide information about size, state of preservation, location and availability of a given material and its documentation. Scholarly work is thus considerably eased wherever worldwide the user is located.
The project reinforces and develops an existing platform Pragmata, designed specifically to accommodate the multifaceted character of the included material and at the same time to be easily linked to other digital resources. The result will be a powerful research tool, fully open-access, which highlights the archaeological work of the institutes and brings Swedish research to the forefront of Classical Archaeology and Digital Humanities. Common Ground will be kept at Uppsala University and integrated into Alvin, a Swedish national platform for preservation and availability of digitized collections and cultural heritage, to expand its dissemination
Final report
The purpose and development of the infrastructure
The infrastructure consists of a web-based platform, Common Ground. Archives for Swedish Archeology in the Mediterranean. It makes available, with open access, documentation from Swedish archaeological fieldwork in the Mediterranean (Greece, Italy, Turkey) from 1894 until today. The purpose has been to collect, inventory, digitize and thereby highlight the Swedish Mediterranean institutes' extensive archaeological archives and collections (photos, excavation diaries, drawings and find lists, etc.) in a common digital resource: a research tool with strong international impact that makes the institutes' archaeological activities visible. In addition to the purely archaeological information, the extensive archive material has significant value for e.g. Cultural history and History of Archaeology, making the resource useful for a wide range of disciplines as well as for an interested broader public.
Project results so far
The finished product Common Ground (CG) is a powerful tool for national and international archaeological research in the form of a user-controlled digital resource. Building on the open-source software platform Arches (created specifically for cultural heritage research), it has been developed in accordance with best practice, FAIR principles and the CG Data Management Plan. The resource gathers in a single place extensive data from more than a hundred years of Swedish archaeological fieldwork. This material has so far been difficult to overview and access, which is why CG significantly streamlines the work process of interested users. The project is based on a complete inventory of existing documentation in the institutes’ archives and thus gives an overall picture hitherto missing. Work with the platform has involved not only the institutes’ staff, but also a large number of Swedish archaeologists and university interns, resulting in closer contacts and new collaborations both between participating institutes and with Swedish universities. The resource moreover creates increased international visibility for Swedish research.
How has the infrastructure been used and what research has been initiated using the infrastructure
CG will be launched with open access during fall 2024. We are currently working with technical staff to fine-tune search features as well as with a test group of international users.
Initially, CG was intended as a tool for preparatory research work, since searches by chronology, material category and find location quickly provide information on the extent, degree of preservation, location and availability of an archaeological material. The finished product however offers much more; the data can be of relevance for e.g. the history of archaeology, cultural history and material studies. The platform enables, for example, alongside archaeological studies and planning of future research, also a critical analysis of previous field projects; this is of great importance for current and coming archaeological work. Furthermore, the CG resource makes visible Swedish researchers' personal and academic networks. This provides new interesting perspectives on Swedish and international research; a project that uses deep mapping and network analysis for the study of early Swedish Classical archaeologists is currently at a developing stage. Furthermore, the collection of data has in itself become an interesting branch of research. We thus collaborate with colleagues in ALM and digital humanities, seeing great method-development potential in the database for the growing research field of paradata.
CG has already received international attention since we are at the forefront of using Arches for archaeological archives. We are in contact with similar projects (Ariadne+, SweDigArch, Fasti Online) wishing to exchange experiences for the benefit of continued development work and to guarantee compatibility between systems both in Sweden and internationally.
Unforeseen technical and methodological problems and deviations from the original plam
Changing the platform environment from existing Pragmata to the newly developed and flexible Arches (structurally based on the formal ontology CIDOC-CRM (https://www.cidoc-crm.org; https://www.archesproject.org), was discussed and approved by RJ in connection with the mid-term report. We thus refer to the mid-term report as well as the application for additional funding regarding the platform change. The switch was implemented without problems by the internationally experienced system developers at Takin Solutions, in accordance with best practice. The result is a greatly improved infrastructure resource compatible with the majority of today's digital systems.
The pandemic delayed work because of the severe COVID restrictions in Italy and Greece. For almost two years the project suffered from staffing and supervision problems in regard to both staff and interns, and from limited access to both archives and archaeological material, as museum storerooms in Italy and Greece were difficult of access or even inaccessible. The Institute in Rome in particular found itself in a difficult situation, with staff being blocked in both Sweden and Rome due to national lockdown and unable to perform their duties. Finally, the presentations of CG planned for 2020 could not be held at the participating institutions.
The documentation from Labraunda has been digitized and integrated into Uppsala University’s system Alvin, as planned. However, Uppsala has yet to find a solution to Alvin's communication problems with newer systems. The inability to export data from Alvin means that the Labraunda documentation is not yet searchable in CG.
Changed needs
We discovered at an early stage that Pragmata did not meet the high requirements for user interfaces with regard to maintenance, registration and enrichment of data, image annotation and application programming interfaces enabling collaborations with larger international and European projects. The switch to Arches was therefore imperative. The platform now meets high-set demands on a system with a well-established data description model and long-term system financing. Furthermore, it was seen as worrisome that Pragmata's system development and maintenance was tied to a single person. This vulnerability problem was however also resolved by the transition to Arches, as this system has a large international user community guaranteeing longevity. Changes in the technical competence of the project and the reference group were also an important issue in the platform change. The project lost a key person with specific IT skills (Pragmata's developer) at an early stage; this actualized the need for a platform change. In addition, two members of the scientific reference group, each with valuable specific skills, had to resign for health reasons.
The integration of the work in the organization and how the infrastructure should be maintained long-term
CG can be easily accessed via a common portal as well as via the institutes' websites. The project and the finished resource are already well integrated into the institutes' scientific and educational activities. The boards of the institutes in Rome and Athens are, together with Museum Gustavianum guaranteeing future upkeep of the resource, regardless of board composition and/or change in institute or museum direction. Stability is moreover assured through Uppsala University’s IT department, which hosts the resource and is responsible for application operation and updates. The institutes have also employed a data steward with archaeological expertise for quality control and data completion. In addition the institutes’ assistant directors will play an active role in future development of the resource.
It is moreover of great value that the institutes' archives have been brought together. The inventory work provides easy overview of Swedish archaeological research in the Mediterranean: this has already enriched the institutes' contextual importance and their historical perspective.
The infrastructure's availability and relationship to requirements for Open Access and Open Science
The project inventories and brings together in digital form the archaeologiocal archives of the Swedish Mediterranean institutes (raw data) and makes it available with open access for free use within the research community.
International collaborations
We communicate with international and national actors, such as FASTI ONLINE (AIAC, www.fastionline.org), ARIADNE Research Infrastructure (www.ariadne-research-infrastructure.eu), ToposText (www.topostext.org), DIGITARCH (www.site.unibo.it/digitarch), SweDigArch (www.swedigarch.se), Pelagios (https://pelagios.org/), Arachne (https://arachne.dainst.org/), as well as centers for Digital Humanities and ALM. A fruitful collaboration with the international reference group and with ICT consultant Takin Solutions has given us access to additional networks of great benefit to the institutes and Swedish academia, while the experience of these experts guarantees our following best practice in development and administration.
Publications resulting from research conducted in connection with the infrastructure
The project work has just been completed and has thus so far not generated any publications, but we intend to discuss experiences of the work process and opportunities for further development in future articles. The project has however been presented in international scientific contexts such as The 29th Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA Belfast 2023) and the workshop Using Linked Open Data and Preliminary Prep for Digital Storytelling to Promote/Disseminate Archives, organized by the British School at Athens (2024). We are currently preparing the presentation "Creating Common Ground. Swedish Archive Research on the Past for the Future" for the 30th Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA Rome, August 2024)
Links to participants’ websites
www.commongroundarch.org, www.sia.gr, www.isvroma.org, www.srii.org
The infrastructure consists of a web-based platform, Common Ground. Archives for Swedish Archeology in the Mediterranean. It makes available, with open access, documentation from Swedish archaeological fieldwork in the Mediterranean (Greece, Italy, Turkey) from 1894 until today. The purpose has been to collect, inventory, digitize and thereby highlight the Swedish Mediterranean institutes' extensive archaeological archives and collections (photos, excavation diaries, drawings and find lists, etc.) in a common digital resource: a research tool with strong international impact that makes the institutes' archaeological activities visible. In addition to the purely archaeological information, the extensive archive material has significant value for e.g. Cultural history and History of Archaeology, making the resource useful for a wide range of disciplines as well as for an interested broader public.
Project results so far
The finished product Common Ground (CG) is a powerful tool for national and international archaeological research in the form of a user-controlled digital resource. Building on the open-source software platform Arches (created specifically for cultural heritage research), it has been developed in accordance with best practice, FAIR principles and the CG Data Management Plan. The resource gathers in a single place extensive data from more than a hundred years of Swedish archaeological fieldwork. This material has so far been difficult to overview and access, which is why CG significantly streamlines the work process of interested users. The project is based on a complete inventory of existing documentation in the institutes’ archives and thus gives an overall picture hitherto missing. Work with the platform has involved not only the institutes’ staff, but also a large number of Swedish archaeologists and university interns, resulting in closer contacts and new collaborations both between participating institutes and with Swedish universities. The resource moreover creates increased international visibility for Swedish research.
How has the infrastructure been used and what research has been initiated using the infrastructure
CG will be launched with open access during fall 2024. We are currently working with technical staff to fine-tune search features as well as with a test group of international users.
Initially, CG was intended as a tool for preparatory research work, since searches by chronology, material category and find location quickly provide information on the extent, degree of preservation, location and availability of an archaeological material. The finished product however offers much more; the data can be of relevance for e.g. the history of archaeology, cultural history and material studies. The platform enables, for example, alongside archaeological studies and planning of future research, also a critical analysis of previous field projects; this is of great importance for current and coming archaeological work. Furthermore, the CG resource makes visible Swedish researchers' personal and academic networks. This provides new interesting perspectives on Swedish and international research; a project that uses deep mapping and network analysis for the study of early Swedish Classical archaeologists is currently at a developing stage. Furthermore, the collection of data has in itself become an interesting branch of research. We thus collaborate with colleagues in ALM and digital humanities, seeing great method-development potential in the database for the growing research field of paradata.
CG has already received international attention since we are at the forefront of using Arches for archaeological archives. We are in contact with similar projects (Ariadne+, SweDigArch, Fasti Online) wishing to exchange experiences for the benefit of continued development work and to guarantee compatibility between systems both in Sweden and internationally.
Unforeseen technical and methodological problems and deviations from the original plam
Changing the platform environment from existing Pragmata to the newly developed and flexible Arches (structurally based on the formal ontology CIDOC-CRM (https://www.cidoc-crm.org; https://www.archesproject.org), was discussed and approved by RJ in connection with the mid-term report. We thus refer to the mid-term report as well as the application for additional funding regarding the platform change. The switch was implemented without problems by the internationally experienced system developers at Takin Solutions, in accordance with best practice. The result is a greatly improved infrastructure resource compatible with the majority of today's digital systems.
The pandemic delayed work because of the severe COVID restrictions in Italy and Greece. For almost two years the project suffered from staffing and supervision problems in regard to both staff and interns, and from limited access to both archives and archaeological material, as museum storerooms in Italy and Greece were difficult of access or even inaccessible. The Institute in Rome in particular found itself in a difficult situation, with staff being blocked in both Sweden and Rome due to national lockdown and unable to perform their duties. Finally, the presentations of CG planned for 2020 could not be held at the participating institutions.
The documentation from Labraunda has been digitized and integrated into Uppsala University’s system Alvin, as planned. However, Uppsala has yet to find a solution to Alvin's communication problems with newer systems. The inability to export data from Alvin means that the Labraunda documentation is not yet searchable in CG.
Changed needs
We discovered at an early stage that Pragmata did not meet the high requirements for user interfaces with regard to maintenance, registration and enrichment of data, image annotation and application programming interfaces enabling collaborations with larger international and European projects. The switch to Arches was therefore imperative. The platform now meets high-set demands on a system with a well-established data description model and long-term system financing. Furthermore, it was seen as worrisome that Pragmata's system development and maintenance was tied to a single person. This vulnerability problem was however also resolved by the transition to Arches, as this system has a large international user community guaranteeing longevity. Changes in the technical competence of the project and the reference group were also an important issue in the platform change. The project lost a key person with specific IT skills (Pragmata's developer) at an early stage; this actualized the need for a platform change. In addition, two members of the scientific reference group, each with valuable specific skills, had to resign for health reasons.
The integration of the work in the organization and how the infrastructure should be maintained long-term
CG can be easily accessed via a common portal as well as via the institutes' websites. The project and the finished resource are already well integrated into the institutes' scientific and educational activities. The boards of the institutes in Rome and Athens are, together with Museum Gustavianum guaranteeing future upkeep of the resource, regardless of board composition and/or change in institute or museum direction. Stability is moreover assured through Uppsala University’s IT department, which hosts the resource and is responsible for application operation and updates. The institutes have also employed a data steward with archaeological expertise for quality control and data completion. In addition the institutes’ assistant directors will play an active role in future development of the resource.
It is moreover of great value that the institutes' archives have been brought together. The inventory work provides easy overview of Swedish archaeological research in the Mediterranean: this has already enriched the institutes' contextual importance and their historical perspective.
The infrastructure's availability and relationship to requirements for Open Access and Open Science
The project inventories and brings together in digital form the archaeologiocal archives of the Swedish Mediterranean institutes (raw data) and makes it available with open access for free use within the research community.
International collaborations
We communicate with international and national actors, such as FASTI ONLINE (AIAC, www.fastionline.org), ARIADNE Research Infrastructure (www.ariadne-research-infrastructure.eu), ToposText (www.topostext.org), DIGITARCH (www.site.unibo.it/digitarch), SweDigArch (www.swedigarch.se), Pelagios (https://pelagios.org/), Arachne (https://arachne.dainst.org/), as well as centers for Digital Humanities and ALM. A fruitful collaboration with the international reference group and with ICT consultant Takin Solutions has given us access to additional networks of great benefit to the institutes and Swedish academia, while the experience of these experts guarantees our following best practice in development and administration.
Publications resulting from research conducted in connection with the infrastructure
The project work has just been completed and has thus so far not generated any publications, but we intend to discuss experiences of the work process and opportunities for further development in future articles. The project has however been presented in international scientific contexts such as The 29th Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA Belfast 2023) and the workshop Using Linked Open Data and Preliminary Prep for Digital Storytelling to Promote/Disseminate Archives, organized by the British School at Athens (2024). We are currently preparing the presentation "Creating Common Ground. Swedish Archive Research on the Past for the Future" for the 30th Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA Rome, August 2024)
Links to participants’ websites
www.commongroundarch.org, www.sia.gr, www.isvroma.org, www.srii.org