Archäoinformatik

The reconstruction of the medieval Jewish quarter-situated in the immediate vicinity of the Cologne town hall-is a shining example of a scholarly reconstruction. Working closely together, the team of the Archaeological Zone-City of Cologne, the research team of the MiQua project, the TU Darmstadt and external architectural historians/building researchers are currently investigating the architectural history of the synagogue and the Jewish quarter and developing exhibits for a planned museum. The Cologne example of a large archaeological site shed light on the potential of combining features, finds and virtual reconstructions. The most recent excavation results of the Archaeological Zone, City of Cologne as well as earlier records of excavations and features provided the basis for an initial digital model that presents a three-dimensional record of the features within the museum area. Although a plausible layout of the site and the floor plans had been developed, the question what the buildings actually looked like remained unanswered. An engraving of a panorama of Cologne in 1531 by Anton Woensam shows numerous half-timbered buildings. It is thus reasonable to assume that 200 years earlier-in 1349-most buildings in Cologne and in the Jewish quarter were half-timbered. Since Cologne no longer has any extant buildings of the period, the team took suitable examples from Limburg, a mere 120 km away, which still has comparable half-timbered houses of the time around 1300 documented by an extant comprehensive body of scholarly research including drawings of their original structures. These buildings served as models for the reconstruction of the rising walls. In a paradigmatic solution the reconstruction shows on the one hand bird's-eye perspective views which follow a comic-stripinspired graphic style that underlines the reconstructive and hypothetical nature of the image. On the other hand, the films feature atmospheric tracking shots from a pedestrian's perspective.

Im Allgemeinen sind archäologische Daten durch eine Vielzahl an Daten-typen und Dateiformaten geprägt, die unterschiedliche Inhalte speichern. Hier spannt sich der Bogen etwa von Texten und tabellarisch erfassten quantitativen Daten über Objektfotografien bis hin zu Vektorgrafiken sowie den immer beliebteren 3D-Modellen. Diese ausgeprägte Diversität ist der Anwendung verschiedener Methoden und der Um-setzung vielfältiger Ansätze in der archäologischen Forschung geschuldet. So generieren archäologische Surveys (Oberfächenfundaufsammlungen) andere Daten als Ausgra-bungen, luftbildarchäologische Maßnahmen oder geophysikalische Prospektionen. Je nach Projekt kommen zudem noch zahlreiche nachträglich digitalisierte, d.h. ursprüng-lich analog angefertigte Ressourcen hinzu, die ihrerseits abermals sehr heterogene In-formationen abbilden können. Die Herausforderung in der Langzeitarchivierung dieser inhomogenen Datensätze liegt unter anderem im Vorhandensein eines Repositoriums, das die verschiedenen Datentypen effektiv aufnehmen und zudem innerhalb des Ar-chivs sinnvoll in Beziehung zueinander setzen kann. Diese Voraussetzungen sind im System PHAIDRA der Universität Wien gegeben, weswegen es dadurch möglich ist, komplexe archäologische Datensätze dort nachhaltig verfügbar zu machen. Abstract: Archaeological data are characterized by a variety of data types and file formats that store different kinds of information respectively contents. This spectrum ranges from texts and tables to object photographs, vector graphics and the increasingly popular 3D models for example. This diversity of archaeological data is due to the use of different methods and various approaches in archaeology. Depending on the individual project, numerous digitized and heterogeneous datasets are added as well. Among others, one of the main challenges in long-term data archiving and data dissemination in archaeology is to handle this inhomogeneous information within a repository. In this article it will be shown that the system PHAIDRA at the University of Vienna enables researchers to make complex archaeological datasets available in a sustainable way.