Project Details
Projekt
Digitisation / Cataloguing of non-textual objects: The ancient world in drawing, plan and architectural survey: primary documentary materials of the 19th and 20 Century in the German Archaeological Institute in Rome
Subject Area
Ancient History
Term
from 2012 to 2016
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 203417397
The German Archaeological Institute in Rome preserves, among others, two collections of manual drawings. "The Historical Archive" consisting of drawings mainly going back to the foundation of the Institute in 1829 until the first decades of the 20th century, and another collection, the "Architectural Archive", initiated with the reopening of the Institute in 1953, containing large-scale graphical documentation created during archaeological fieldwork. The drawings show a wide range of monuments such as architectural structures, panoramas, layouts and reconstructive plans in addition to sheets showing topographical maps and a variety of finds within different categories.The unique drawings, paintings, plans, sections and sketches of both collections depict ancient monuments and objects, many of which are lost, destroyed, damaged or altered nowadays, for instance due to restoration or environmental impact. Hence, these drawings have not only an artistic value, but rather constitute a very important testimony of the illustrated individual objects and monuments. At the same time these collections represent a part of the history of the archaeological research. The interest of the scientific community is reflected in numerous enquiries directed to the German Archaeological Institute in Rome regarding the materials preserved in the archive collections.Within this project, the complete "Historical Archive" and selected parts of the "Architectural Archive" will be digitized and catalogued appropriately in order to provide a permanent worldwide online access. Via ARACHNE and ZENON-DAI the digitized material will be scientifically contextualized and virtually available on a sustained basis and free of charge. The integration of bibliographical meta data, registered for each sheet individually in ZENON-DAI, is carried out via an interface in ARACHNE, where the drawings are visualized within the iDAI-Bookbrowser as well as the DFG-viewer. The technological processing allows a virtual browsing experience that simulates the - until now - locally restricted physical insight, supplemented by additional information. The aggregated digital data will be connected to the EU initiatives CARARE and Europeana and it will also be accessible worldwide via the CLAROS network.
DFG Programme
Cataloguing and Digitisation (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)
