The project

THANADOS (The Anthropological and Archaeological Database of Sepultures) deals with the digital collection and presentation of Early Medieval cemeteries in the area of present day Austria.

Within THANADOS hitherto published information on Early Medieval burials was digitized and translated to 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 real archaeological 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 closely connected to the OpenAtlas project and entirely build upon open source technology. It started in June 2019 and is funded by the go!digital NextGeneration programme of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (GDND 2018 039). Since the end of the project in 2021 THANADOS provides an online repository of all hitherto published Early Medieval cemeteries from the area of present day Austria. The project is actively carried on within further cooperations and new sites are added continuously

The application is entirely open source and the code is available via GitHub under the MIT licence

Team

Principal Investigator, Design and Frontend Programming: Stefan Eichert
Principal Investigator, Bioarchaeology, Digitisation and Translations: Nina Richards
Backend Programming: Alexander Watzinger, Bernhard Koschiček-Krombholz
Digitisation and Translations: Jennifer Portschy, Roland Filzwieser, Sonja Mayer, Sandrina Schwarz
Additional Support: Jan Belik, Christoph Hoffmann

Contributors

Iris Koch, Christoph Gutjahr, Max Bergner, Wolfgang Breibert, Barbara Hausmair, Irene Petschko, Judith Benedix, Renzo Coen, Bendeguz Tobias

Contact

Host 1: 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

Host 2: Austrian Archaeological Institute
Contact Person: Nina Richards MA BSc - nina.richards@oeaw.ac.at
Address: Österreichisches Archäologisches Institut, Rosenbursenstraße 3, 1010 Wien

Funding

GO!DIGITAL NEXT GENERATION programme of the Austrian Academy of Sciences

Partners and Cooperations:

ACDH-CH - Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage
OpenAtlas
ERC Synergy Grant HistoGenes