Research Projects
Nineveh Digital Archive Project
A research project of the Department of Archaeology.
Background
Initiated in 2005, the Digital Nineveh Archives is an effort to preserve and disseminate the 160 year record of archaeological investigation in the site of Nineveh, in northern Iraq. Nineveh is arguably one of the longest occupied cities in the world, where there exists an almost continuous sequence of evidence from at least the mid-7th century BCE through to today. Tragically, the 750 hectare ancient city and its immediate surroundings are being rapidly obliterated by the developing city of Mosul, and the war in Iraq has brought new levels of destruction to this once great imperial capital. Originally based at the University of California, Berkeley, the Digital Nineveh Archives was founded by David Stronach (Director of the UC Berkeley Expedition to Nineveh 1987-1990) and Eleanor Barbanes Wilkinson (Project Director, Durham University). It has since become an extensive network of archaeologists, technical specialists, scholars and cultural heritage organizations within Iraq, the UK, and the US, with the shared objective of facilitating knowledge sharing and enabling new archaeological research through advanced digital applications. The DNA also fosters professional collaboration, public outreach, and training through periodic conferences and workshops. The project is supported with grants from the US National Endowment for the Humanities, the British University Iraq Consortium, and the British Council.
The public interface of the Digital Nineveh Archives is a perpetually expanding online data repository housing primary data (such as original field records derived from archaeological work in Nineveh) along with interpretive data (such as articles, correspondence, and unpublished texts) in digital form, geographically coordinated within a three-dimensional matrix. Through collaboration with a number of partnering affiliates, including CyArk, the Alexandria Archive Institute, and the Media Vault Program, the Digital Nineveh Archives employs state of the art technologies providing the researcher with a variety of methods to view, search, analyze, and re-use archived data. The Digital Nineveh Archives continues to develop, benefiting Iraqi archaeologists (both as a source for current information as well as a means of self-archiving and publication), and it is intended for educators, museums, students, and anyone continuing excavation or research in Nineveh or related areas of ancient Near Eastern archaeology.
