From the initial planning for the ETANA site in 2000, discussions about what a subject portal should include cited a need to provide access to, preserve and archive archaeological data from excavations. While individual archaeologists and dig sites were posting data on the web, there was, and still is not, an agreed upon archival storage mechanism or site.
It was with this need in mind that the ETANA partners sought and received an National Science Foundation grant in 2004 to develop software to create electronic mappings to allow searching across excavation sites. The prototype “Digbase” structure was designed at Virginia Tech by Professor Ed Fox and his students, with Professor James Flanagan of Case Western University serving as the principal investigator of the grant.
With the support of a number of Archaeological Institutes and Societies, and contributions of data from a variety of digs, the ‘ETANA-DL’ platform was the outcome of the grant. Further development of the platform was needed to make it a robust and stable system. ETANA’s efforts to fund further development of the platform were not immediately successful. In 2009, a partnership with the Eric Kansa and the Alexandria Archive Institute to develop a more robust platform for the ETANA-DL data was undertaken.
Related Archaeological Institutes and Societies:
- American Schools of Oriental Research
- The Sonya and Marco Nadler Institute of Archaeology (Tel Aviv University)
- Andrews University Institute of Archaeology and Horn Museum
- The Cobb Institute of Archaeology (Mississippi State University)
Related Archaeological Projects on the Web:
- Tell Madaba
- Tell Mozan (Urkesh)
- Umm el-Jimal
- Tell Nimrin
- Tel Halif
- Madaba Plains Project: Tall al-‘Umayri’, Tall Jalul; and Tall Hisban
- Megiddo
