Robert Saul / Peter Scheuchel / Karl Fischer / Wolfgang Börner (Magistrat der Stadt Wien, Austria) It is the objective of the “Wien-Kultur” project to process, organise and analyse all knowledge concerning the City of Vienna’s stock of cultural assets worthy of protection by using state-of-the-art technology. Databases, the Geographical Information System and an electronic multi-purpose map (city map) are employed to exactly delimit or newly define protection zones (a key element of the cultural asset database). A variety of applications provide information on crucial, historically and urbanistically relevant identifiers and characteristic structures of the City of Vienna by means of maps, photographs and – in the near future – videos and 3D reconstructions. This digital, interactive map not only creates an ideal basis for all plans of relevance for urban development and urban conservation, but also provides Vienna’s population with an excellent source of information on the history of their city. The visualisation of the geographic data is done by the means of a Web Map Service (WMS) managed from a web browser. Based on the Internet, WMS provides the possibility to create maps through the integration of multiple geographic information systems enabling the retrieval of thematic information from the existing geographic data. WMS is considering the worldwide standards for the exchange of digital maps specified by the Open GIS Consortium (OGS). The design of the user interface is taking into account the considerations of the Web Style Guide defined for web applications of the City of...

Shabeena Yasmin Saikia (Guwahati, Assam, India) In a federal polity where the small federal units bear the burden of managing their own houses in order, the importance of archaeology and archaeological sites is at stake. Archaeology, as a discipline, in many such areas, has not yet developed or yet to find a place in the Universities. It is because of this that, there are not too many enthusiastic lobbies of students who could make teams, raise funds and lead archaeological excavations. India being an ancient country has archaeological relics some of which are dated back to some 3500 BC. The country is indeed rich in important archaeological deposits. The small units which we call States under the Constitution, administration of archaeology is within their fore while most of them are out of resources to give appropriate cover to their valuable archaeological pasts preserved so far as heritage sites. This is because, except the few five percent States, the financial constraint in others is so acute that at times, they become pennyless even to pay their employees. It is indeed a pathetic affair. Carrying out continuous exploration and excavations is an unsolved equation. As a result, the important archaeological sites, in both urban and rural areas, transformed into jungles. There are instances when Government had to block funds for diverting the same for other emergency purposes. Preservation of archaeological findings comes only to the next of providing bread to the masses. While this is the status in almost all developing countries, few countries in east Europe like France are also no exceptions to this. This paper is an attempt to find out the causes behind such large scale failure on the part of the Government to give protective coverage to the heritage sites. This analysis will be followed by an effort to fund out an alternative solution to it and gauge the prospect of archaeology in the developing...

Maria Otchir-Goriaeva (Kalmyk Institute of Humanitarian Research,Russian Academy of Sciences Elista, Russia) Republic of Kalmykia in Russian Federation namely is occupied the arid steppe on the right (west) bank of the Lower Volga in the North-Western Caspian Steppe between 45.00 and 48.00 deg N and 44.00 and 47.00 deg E. The total square of the Republic is 75,9 thousands km. Kalmyk Republic has a very low density of the population – 2,4 per square km. The vast territory and less husbandry activity resulted to the unique preservation of the archaeological sites and archaeological landscape. The real quantity of archaeological sites on this huge territory is not still accounted. Currently in Kalmykia archaeological evidence from the Late Neolithic (IV millennium BC) to Medieval periods comes exclusively from burial-mound sites, the so-called kurgans and only a few settlements. The real big problem is the lack of the registration of the archaeological sites and their management. Traditionally the heritage management in the republic was limited only rescue excavations. As a first step towards to the cultural resource management we have mapped all archaeological sites, which were excavated on the territory of the republic from 1929-1998. Altogether the digital map contains 107 points and information about 3871 graves and settlements. Additional to the extract spatial information of the archaeological sites the map is provided by data base, which includes – the name of the author of the excavations, year of the excavations, name of archaeological site, list of the kurgans and graves, the cultural identification of the every grave, publishing data, and museum number of the artefacts. The map of the archaeological sites with excavation data base is also good basis for any archaeological research. *The Project is supported by RGNF Grant...

Emanuela Montagnari Kokelj / Pier Luigi Nimis / Francesco Peroni / Francesco Princivalle / Simonetta Pasqualis / Stefano Martellos (University of Trieste, Italy) The University of Trieste is a relatively young institution, created in 1924 from a previous High School of Commerce (1877) and including a Hospital of long tradition (1841). These origins, a policy of acquisitions of contemporary as well as old literature, furniture and paintings, and the development of research projects and relative equipment of high specialistic relevance in various fields have created a significant historical and scientific heritage. The Sistema Museale dell’Ateneo di Trieste – smaTs is a system under construction that includes all these collections. Its core is represented by the Museum of Mineralogy and Petrography, the Museum of Biology, with the Botanic Garden and the most important greenhouse of coffee plants in Europe, and the Antique Library Funds of the Faculty of Law, which belong to the National Network of the Italian Universities’ Museums, and are known on a world-wide scale. At present the other components of the Sistema Museale are less structured for public use, though they start to be visible in the Internet (see www.units.it/smats). The accessibility on-line of the collections is one of the main goals of this operation, for both theoretical and practical reasons. The former pivot on the necessity of using the most updated systems of communication to present scientific and historical contents. As to the latter, the collections, quite different in typology, are hosted by ca. 25 Departments located in 4 different campuses; in certain cases – when the collections are constituted by technological objects of big dimensions, or the buildings themselves represent items of cultural heritage – they cannot be moved, either temporarily of permanently, or are not visible at all. The philosophy of construction of the smaTs and the state of realization of the project are presented in an international congress for the first...

Erzsébet Marton (National Office of Cultural Heritage Budapest, Hungary) As we reported in the 9th conference in 2004 – the European Textile Network based set up in Belgium in 1997 under the umbrella of the Assembly of European Regions. Meanwhile the Cultural Itineraries idea has been supported by several European Union programmes. The ETN members are: institutions, associations and private persons, who are committed of textiles and textile industrial researches. The ETN secretariat has been located in Hanover, where the domain of the association works and is setting as well. Its homepage: www.etn-net.org We would like to enlarge the industrial routes within the frame of Culture 2000 project during 2006, but actually we did not know could we follow it or not. The application will presumably be decided about in Brussels by May 2005… The new EU project could be introduced by the participation of five countries in 2006. The Hungarian partners: Archaeocomp Association Budapest and the National Office of Cultural Heritage, where I am working now. The enlarged project would like to connect Romania, Bulgaria, France (Champagne-Ardenne region), and to enlarge the Dutch and Hungarian routes as well. News: The main activity of ETN this year the 13th ETN Conference, including the General Assembly will be held in Izmir, Turkey, with attractive tours, a.o. to Bursa and Istanbul. The meetings and tours will take place from 15th to 22nd September 2005. Website of the Conference host (for information on local conditions and for Turkish participants:) http://web.deu.edu.tr/etn Conference programme The international...

Anatoly V. Malafeev1 / Galina I. Zabolotni1 / Nikolay I. Kuznetsov2 (1Samara Branch of Moscow State University of Service, Samara, Russia / 2Department of Design and Art Service, Samara, Russia) Cultural mosaic of Samara rigion, its universalities and originalities, its past and present are the great resource of the development of tourism, poliethnical creativity and intercultural integration. Samara Povolzhie is situated within territory of Middle Basin of Volga river. Northern and western parts of this area lie in European forest-steppe zone, but southern and eastern parts stretch for Pre-Ural steppe province. Mid-Volga’s region belongs to extremely active cross-contact ethnic-cultural areas of Euroasian continent. The cultural heritage of Samara region is great and diverse. It is created by means of many generations and different nations. The ways of eastern and western, southern and northern cultures, ethnicities, religions were transcrossed here. This process of transcrossing had determined the complicated multiethnical population’s structure of Samara region from prehistorical times. The settling of Samara Povolzhie had begun in palaeolithic time, but wide development of this land had taken place just in neolithic. In last years the series new neolitic sites were discovered here. These monuments enable to show the originality of local cultures already in prehistorical time.The Samarskaya Luka is a rich and original environmental musium, a unique part of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. There are over 120 significant natural objects and over100 historical and cultural monuments , over 100 species of animals and...