The Amphora Project; an online resource for the study of Roman Amphorae

The Amphora Project an online resource for the study of Roman Amphorae Paul Cripps, University of Southampton, School of Humanities; Archaeology.

Introduction
Overview of project
Team
Aims
The online resource
Database
Image collection
Website
Live Demonstration!

Project overview
AHRC funded major project
3 year project
A number of people involved
Simon Keay (Project Manager)
David Williams (Senior Research Fellow & Project Supervisor)
Penny Copeland & Jill Philips (photography, illustration, content)
Paul Cripps (database development)
Jo Gilham (website/database development)
Graeme Earl and Tony Austin (various things!)
External contributors (content)

Aims and objectives
To provide an online introductory resource for the study of Roman amphorae
Aimed at non-specialist users
To provide an online reference collection of amphora types and associated information
Written descriptions
Drawings
Photographs

The resource
Comprises
A database holding textual data and paths to multimedia objects
A website which provides a comprehensive interface to the database
Resides with the Archaeology Data Service
A permanent managed home for digital archaeological resources
Accessible using standard web browser technology

The resource - contents
Wealth of information
217 Amphora Types
814 individual published references with 1594 occurrences
1900 images
Drawings (574)
Hand specimens (366)
Photographs of whole or partial amphorae (498)
Photographs of thin sections (457)

The database - overview
Relational data structure
Controlled vocabularies where possible
Fabric types
Diagnostic characteristics
Proper names eg authors
Designed and loaded with data using Microsoft Access
Simple and easy to use
Customised interface for data entry and maintenance
Migrated to Oracle at ADS
Enterprise level DBMS capable of supporting many transaction requests from web-server

The database - structure
Relational data structure
But influenced by ontological approaches to archaeological information
Particularly the nature of types, typologies and classification
Core is one self referencing table
AmphoraTypes
Amphorae can have subtypes and supertypes
Recursive relationship rather than enforced artificial heirarchy

The database – conceptual ER AmphoraType Is subtype of / is supertype of Photographs Drawings Published References

The database - contents
Each amphora type has a number of free-text descriptive attributes created from submitted texts and published sources
Contents of amphora
Origins and occurrences
Fabric
Distinctive features
Date range
Supported by standardised categorical attributes to facilitate structured querying
Controlled vocabularies
Used by online search facilities

Images and Image Processing
The resource contains many images to support the text
All presented as rasters for web delivery
Jpeg
Drawings created using CorelDraw
Drawn to scale
Artistic conventions

Images and Image Processing
Many presented as ‘zoomifyable’ images
Free Flash based software from www.zoomify.com
Works on OSX and Windows using a web browser and a plugin
User can zoom in/out and pan around the image
A desktop application prepares the image by slicing the original image into segments, resampling as needed and storing metadata in an xml file

A web-based resource
Dynamic interface to the database
Search facilities
Browse catalogues
Coldfusion
ADS look and feel
Common across projects
Easy to use
Non-linear experience
Possible to approach resource from any angle

Catalogue of Fabrics

Catalogue of Amphorae

Amphora pages - main

Amphora pages - images

Amphora pages - fabrics

Published References

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The Amphora Project; an online resource for the study of Roman Amphorae

by paul cripps

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