The ARIADNE Research Infrastructure AISBL (ARIADNE RI) was founded on 28th November 2022. It is not-for-profit association, established according to Belgian law, but capable of operating at an international level. Its primary aim is to continue the work of ARIADNEplus (2018-22) and the previous ARIADNE Integrating Activity (2012-16). By the end of 2022 these projects had established a Linked Open Data triple store, also searchable via an Open Access data catalogue (the ARIADNE portal), and providing access to over 3.5m rich data resources. These encompass the archaeology and heritage of 4 continents and over 40 countries, and range from the archaeology of the earliest hominids to the present day.

The founding membership of the ARIADNE RI comprises over 25 members and associate members from the ARIADNEplus consortium. Our statutes confirm that the purpose of the ARIADNE RI is to:

a. Promote, support and develop the use of digital techniques applied to the arts, humanities, cultural heritage and in particular to archaeology;
b. Contribute to the development of software tools to operate on digital data in these sectors;
c. Promote and encourage the creation of open archives with the data produced in these fields by research and management;
d. Maintain and develop management tools allowing the integration of digital data archives in these sectors;
e. Continue to manage the integration of the archaeological data archives developed in the ARIADNE and ARIADNEplus projects, expanding and updating the digital catalogue already available online and the associated digital infrastructure;
f. Support this program with the necessary communication tools.

The ARIADNE RI will therefore work to ensure that the ARIADNE portal is maintained, enabling the update of existing datasets, and the addition of new members and new data sets. Based upon its broad membership it is able to represent the largest international grouping of archaeological data repositories, national heritage bodies, museums, scientific research organisations and universities. It also brings together archaeologists and information scientists in a collaboration that enables them to apply for international research funding as a single legal entity.

ARIADNE for data providers

ARIADNE for researchers

This two minute video introduces the ARIADNE Research Infrastructure AISBL, a non-profit organisation which is integrating archaeological metadata into its Portal in order to make the data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reussable (FAIR). There are 4 million resources in the Portal relating to excavations, sites, monuments and artefacts which can be searched using a combination of “What”, “Where” and “When”. The data schema used for the metadata is based on the CIDOC CRM. The video also explains what is required for a data provider to upload their data into the Portal, i.e. for “What”, subject matter using the Getty Arts and Architecture thesaurus (AAT), for “Where” longitude and latitude co-ordinates and for “When” a defined time period using PeriodO.

This two minute video introduces the ARIADNE Research Infrastructure AISBL, a non-profit organisation, to researchers and end users of the Portal and its services. The 4 million records contained in the Portal range from the earliest Hominids to the Cold War and cover four continents. The records to the whole archaeological process from excavation data, laboratory results through to publications and can be searched using a combination of “What”, “Where” and “When”. Users can focus on the resources of interest and in many cases, directly download the information they need.