About

Project

THANADOS (The Anthropological and Archaeological Database of Sepultures) deals with the digital collection and presentation of cemeteries investigated by means of archaeology, anthropology and other related disciplines

Within THANADOS information on burials is being digitised according to FAIR principles and presented in English language. The data are mapped using the CIDOC CRM and provided online. The information can be explored via a digital catalogue and within an interactive map. Cartographic visualisations as well as charts and plots are created dynamically based on research data.

It aims at providing a best practice way on how to disseminate archaeological sources and research in the 21st century against the background of digital humanities.

It is based on the OpenAtlas system and entirely built upon open source technology. It started in 2019 within the projects MEDCEM based at the Czech Academy of Sciences and THANADOS (Austrian Archaeological Institute and Natural History Museum Vienna) funded by the go!digital NextGeneration programme of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (GDND 2018 039).

In 2022 THANADOS was transformed into a collaborative project coordinated and hosted by the Natural History Museum Vienna

With international partners and cooperations based on mutual agreements the system is developed further and new data are added continuously.

Hosted data

Data are collected and presented on the project basis. The basic dataset consists of the results of the THANADOS project implemented in 2019-2021, which registered all hitherto published Early Medieval cemeteries from the area of present day Austria.

The system is open to cooperation and for hosting new projects aimed at burial data from any period. THANADOS does not aim for completeness (it does not want to be exhaustive in any sense). It is a platform for hosting any thematically relevant datasets that the authors want to offer as Open Data in a standardised form. THANADOS offers data providers support in processing and integrating data on a regional basis (by regional administrators) and all the benefits associated with presenting data in THANADOS platform. including aggregation into ARIADNE Portal. To get more information, please contact the respective coordinators/contact persons.

Team

Main Coordinator, Principal Investigator, Design and Programming: Stefan Eichert
Principal Investigator, Bioarchaeology, Digitisation and Translations: Nina Richards
Backend Programming: Alexander Watzinger, Bernhard Koschiček-Krombholz
AIS CR team (Czechia): Jan Hasil, David Novák, Ondřej Švejcar
Additional Support: Jan Belik, Christoph Hoffmann

Contact

Austria
Natural History Museum Vienna
Contact Person: Mag. Dr. Stefan Eichert - stefan.eichert@nhm-wien.ac.at
Address: Naturhistorisches Museum Wien, Prähistorische Abteilung, Burgring 7, 1010 Wien

Austrian Archaeological Institute
Contact Person: Nina Richards MA BSc - nina.richards@oeaw.ac.at
Address: Österreichisches Archäologisches Institut, Rosenbursenstraße 3, 1010 Wien

Czechia
Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague
Contact Person: Mgr. David Novák, Ph.D. novak@arup.cas.cz
Address: Institute of Archaeology CAS, Prague, Letenská 123/4, 118 01 Prague 1

Projects

THANADOS (Austria)
MEDCEM (Medieval Cemeteries at the Periphery of the Carolingian World)
ERC Synergy Grant HistoGenes

Cooperations

ACDH-CH - Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage
OpenAtlas
Time Machine
ARIADNEplus
Austrian Archaeological Institute