Presentation given by Rónán Swan, Head of Archaeology and Heritage at Transport Infrastructure Ireland, at the 2017 DRI Community Forum, discussing working with DRI and Discovery Programme to ingest archaeological reports from over 20 years of TII pre-road-building excavations.

1. DRI, Members and Community Forum, RIA
24th July 2017
Rónán Swan
Head of Archaeology and Heritage, TII

2. Transport Infrastructure Ireland (TII)
Peter Barrow Photography
TII
TII
J. O’Sullivan
Cork Independent

3. Why is TII concerned with Archaeology?
Legislation/
Regulation
Public
Trust/Value
Risk
Council of Europe – Valetta Convention
EU Directives – EIA, Access to Information on the
Environment
National – National Monuments Acts and Statutory
Instruments
Policy and Regulation – Codes of Practice for
Archaeology
To ensure archaeological spend is
(a.) appropriate
(b.) full value is realised

4. Dissemination initiatives 2001 to 2015…
• Schools outreach
• Local lectures
• Seminars
• Exhibitions
• Posters/Brochures
• Seanda magazine (8)
• Books (25)
• Excavation Reports
• Project websites
• Archaeo-geophysical
website (with University of
Bradford)
• NRA excavations database
Professional
• Archaeologists
• Engineers
• Planners
• Developers
• Researchers
Public
• landowners
• Schools
• Archaeological societies
• Students
• Artists
• General Public

5. NRA Excavations Database – a salutary lesson
2008 – 2012…2015
• On-line database
• Summary information for ca. 1000 sites
• Chronological, Artefactual and
Environmental summary data
Limitations
• Lack of flexibility
• No connectivity/not linked data
• No metadata
• No spatial aspect
• No download function for reports
• Reports available on request

6. Cultural Heritage Data Working Group [Oscail Initiative]
Members
• Heritage Council
• National Monuments Service
• National Museum of Ireland
• Office of Public Works
• Dublin City Council
• Meath County Council
• Digital Repository of Ireland
• Discovery Programme
• Transport Infrastructure
Ireland
Established in 2014
• Purpose
• Identify data sets across archaeological/cultural
heritage sector
• develop infrastructure for archaeological data
• Pilot project - NRA, DRI and Discovery Programme
• Objective 1 – Establish whether the DRI can provide
repository for NRA archaeological data sets
• Accessible to variety of users
• Long term security
• Objective 2 – To consider challenges for the future
and to consider how this can be scaled up to
address major data sets held by cultural institutions

7. Pilot Project 2015 - 2017
The Primary Record
• 2000+ archaeological excavation reports from 120+
road projects
• Multiple archaeological companies and authors
• Both paper and digital
• Variable standards – length, content and rights
Actions
• Agree metadata standards
• Manually capture metadata from each report using
Dublin Core standard
• Validate spatial data (confirm correct location and
then convert ING to ITM)
• Link each record to Logainm.ie
• Adopt standardised vocabularies
• Transfer to Discovery for ingestion into DRI and
Minting of DOIs
Dublin Core metadata elements
 identifier
 title
 creator
 subject
 description
 publisher
 contributor
 date
 type
 format
 language
 temporal coverage
 spatial coverage
 rights
TII Discovery DRI

8. TII Digital Heritage Collections (June 2017)

9. Accessibility/Connectivity

10. Where to next?
Maintain and sustain collections
• Upload remaining reports ca. 850
• Upload reports from current schemes
Increase connectivity
• Ariadne – EU Archaeology Portal
• OSI GeoHive
• …
Expand collections
• Migrate NRA Archaeo-geophysical database
• ePub editions of NRA/TII publications
• Drone footage
• Laser scans and models
• …
Pilot Outcomes
Objective 1 – upload reports to DRI - accessible and secure
Objective 2 – scale up for other datasets - discussions underway
• Supports TII compliance with OpenGov policies
• Simplifies report requests
• TII Archaeological Contracts updated
• Implement RIA’s Archaeology 2025 Strategy actions
re. digital data infrastructure

11. TII Digital Heritage Collections
Acknowledgements
• Edel Bhreathnach, Natalie Harrower,
Sandra Collins
• Lillian Butler, Evie Monaghan, Anthony
Corns, Niall Hayden, Louise Kennedy,
Stuart Kenny, Claire Lanigan, Kevin
Long, Pat Reid, Rebecca Grant, Michael
Stanley, Mary Teehan, Sharon Webb.
• Staff at Discovery, DRI and TII.
• Archaeologists and Archaeological
Companies
Thank you!
Ronan.Swan@tii.ie
01-646-3491
087-919-4728

13. J. Eogan
J. Eogan
M. Casey
S. Kelly
S Davis
Earthsound
J. Eogan
Aircam
The Archaeological Process