Sneža Tecco Hvala / Peter Pehani / Tomaž Podobnikar
(Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia)
In the post-modern society of new information technologies, archaeology is facing many challenges. Due to intensive constructional activities and other spatial interferences, more and more data of the archaeological sites is emerging. This pace can not be followed adequately with traditional forms of reporting. In addition, nowadays spatial policy is being created by economic and political interests, thus it is being the object of planning, evaluation and social control. Archaeology is also playing a role in modern spatial policy concerning the protection and investigation of cultural heritage. Simultaneously, we notice also an increase of public interest towards cultural heritage that is embedded in the collective consciousness and present value system.
Archaeology must constantly renew its informational infrastructure including databases, which represents a firm basis for decision making and education. Data sources are usually dislocated and the process of collecting and harmonisation takes a lot of time and efforts. There is a real need for unified, integral and user-friendly databases supported by efficient software that enables their quality improvement and interaction with other data of cultural heritage.
Regarding mentioned facts, we started with the project of upgrading of Archaeological database of Slovenia (ARKAS) with internet GIS. The ARKAS is relational database containing around 7000 sites compliant with the core data standard principles by recommendation of the Council of Europe Archaeological heritage. We started an integration of ARKAS with spatial databases to obtain an effective spatial system based on GIS and later on internet GIS. The surrounding internet GIS technology builds the informational infrastructure for real-time visual presentation of the sites and basic spatial analysis for dedicated users. We intend to develop the ARKAS to be up-to-date central archaeological database of Slovenia. Our ultimate aim is harmonisation and connection of cultural heritage databases.
Keywords: archaeological sites database, internet GIS, integration