La catalogazione nei musei archeologici del Lazio: contributo per una terminologia ragionata

Ilaria D'Ambrosio, Paola Pascucci

«Archeologia e Calcolatori» 2010, 21, 7-25

Abstract

In 1999 the Museum Service of the Lazio Region, together with the firm Andromeda, set up a database for the archaeological finds in the municipal museums in the region. The project, called IDRA, was created for the purpose of locating and quantifying the archaeological material in each museum. Designed as a client/server system with an SQL engine, IDRA software combines the philosophy of relational databases with object-oriented structures, where the information is organized hierarchically. At this time the database consists of around 17,000 files - provided with digital images and referring to 50 different museums - that are now available on the Culture Portal of the Lazio Region (http://www.culturalazio.it/site/it-IT/Argomenti/Banche_dati_online/). A tentative model used to locate both museums and finding sites through Google Maps has also been made. On the basis of specific agreements with the Ministry of Culture and the Municipality of Rome a project was initiated for a shared consultation of databases pertinent to different authorities as well as for a common investigation about structured terminology lists. To this aim we have conducted a standardization of terminology related to the entry “Object Definition”, and developed a list of about 500 terms. In the present article we have focused on some of the issues that emerged during our work in order to submit them to public discussion. We deal, for instance, with how to define the state of preservation of the object in relation to its definition; whether and how to use diminutives; how to structure the categories of material so as to define the finds for optimal searching; and how to file objects reused at a later period.

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