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Using the ARIADNE Catalogue

The ARIADNE Portal contains a Catalogue and several services which provide access to over 4 million archaeological resources that can be searched and filtered according to a number of criteria. The returned results from the search facilities provided with the Catalogue are listed individually as well as aggregated results on the map and on the timeline. This Guide aims at helping all end users to get the maximum benefit from using the Catalogue.

A separate section of the Portal provides several services and tools to assist archaeologists with their research, from planning data management, exploration and analysis to display of all types of data (including from the ARIADNE Knowledgebase, where applicable). Each of these services has its own information on their use and application, so are not covered by this Guide.

For further information about the ARIADNE Research Infrastructure and the Portal, see the ? About page, the link being located in the horizontal menu on the far right at the top.

Video: demonstration of the Portal Catalogue

This 40 minute video by Prof. Julian Richards provides the background to the development of the Portal, the technology used and demonstrates the search options available in the Catalogue, explaining how these affect the search results. Shorter clips from this video are used in the relevant sections of the Guide.

How to use this Guide

This Guide has been created in GitHub as part of the documentation associated with the ARIADNE RI AISBL. It is presented in six sections as shown on the left hand side. The contents (headings and sub-headings) within the currently displayed section are shown as links on the right hand side of the page enabling navigation to the required topic of interest.

Searching the Catalogue

Entry to the catalogue (i.e. the landing page) consists of a text entry search box with the option to apply one of four filters.

ARIADNE Catalogue Landing page

Catalogue entry page

The search is designed to start with one or more key words where logical “AND” is applied. For example, a search for “gold coin” will return only records where both these words, either adjacent or separately, are to be found in the metadata record. The default setting is “All fields”, i.e. the whole record is searched for matching terms. Omitting a key word defaults to the entire Catalogue, the returned results depending on the filters selected.

When a search term is entered, a list of up to 10 records is displayed where the term is found in one or more of the metadata fields. Records with matches in the highest number of fields are shown first.

Records matching the search term in the text entry box

List of records matching the search term

Text-based search

There are four filters based on the metadata supplied for each resource available for more targeted searches:

  • Time period – name of time period(s) e.g. Iron age, medieval…
  • Place – place name which can be anything from a specific location to a continent.
  • Title – only the title fields are searched for matching terms.
  • Getty AAT Subject – the subject(s) defined by the data provider are matched to the Getty Arts and Architecture Thesaurus which enables the end user to see and search for data with matching translations and also related terms.

For the Time Period, Place and Title filters, only exact matches in the language used are returned. E.g. if Time Period is selected, the Swedish term for Bronze Age, “bronsålder”, will return all records with the text “bronsålder” in the Dating field.

The Getty AAT Subject option enables a multi-lingual search to be performed by returning all records that contain a native language match (in the Original subject field) to the English Getty AAT subject as well as that specified in the Getty AAT Subject field when this is present. Furthermore, since the search is hierarchical, any broad term such as “weapons” will also include all sub-categories such as swords, axes, daggers, etc. The search will return records that contain these subjects as well as those with matching terms in other languages.

More about the Getty ATT (on the Getty website)

The Search results page

The search results are displayed with a wider range of filters which can be used to further refine the results. New searches can also be started from this page.

ARIADNE Catalogue search results page

Search results page

Each of the records shown in the search results has a Resource Type icon next to its title. If a resource such as a Collection or a Fieldwork archive, for example, contains more than one Resource type, then the icon will be displayed for first Resource type listed in the metadata (regardless of the actual one selected if the Resource Type filter is used). This is evident for the Resource type ‘Scientific analysis’ as these datasets may be part of a larger collection or Fieldwork archive.

Resources that are to be found in a CoreTrustSeal certified repository will also have this icon displayed below the Resource Type icon.

Set of icons which classify the resource type

Record of Resource type Site/Monument with the CoreTrustSeal icon (and text displayed with mouseover)

Options for displaying the results

At the top on the right hand side of the Results page are two options for controlling the display of the results, Order and Per page.

Per page
Drop down menu of values for how many results are displayed on the page The default number of resources shown on the Results page is 20.

The Per page option enables this to be changed from between 5 to 50 per page.
Order
List of options which determine the display order Relevance - calculated from several fields, Title being the most important, then Description and Subject.

Issued date - date of publication of the resource. This is also the default setting.

Dating - most recent or least recent date of the one or more dates found in each record.

Publisher - data provider (of the resource metadata).

Resource type - broad resource type (as defined in the Filters).

How ‘Relevance’ is calculated

Relevance is basically a score allocated to resources which match the current search criteria based on the metadata fields. This score determines the order in which the resources are listed (i.e. from highest score to lowest or vice versa). The algorithm used gives the highest score to matches to the Title, followed by the Description and then the Subject fields (i.e. nativeSubject and derivedSubject) after that with other fields such as location and time etc. also adding to the score (as and where relevant).

Refining the search results

The search results can refined using a combination of What, Where and When as well as the individual filters. The following sections explain how each of these can be used to narrow down the search results.