Researched Areas

Website presentation of the Map of Archaeological Reference Points within the Prague Heritage Area

The Map of Archaeological Reference Points (MADB) continues the long-time efforts of Ladislav Hrdlička (Institute of Archaeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague) for a systemic recording of archaeological activity in the Prague Heritage Area (PPR) in the second half of the 20th century. The current technical solution dates from 2013–2015 when the original data structure of MADB was integrated into a spinal information system of Czech and Moravian archaeology, Archaeological Map of the Czech Republic (AMČR). Thus, a specialised layer – extension – was formed enabling the creation, administration, sharing (crowdsourcing), and publication of data by the community of archaeologists active in the Prague Heritage Area. In general, the extension can be used for archaeological research in localities with extremely complicated stratigraphic development which are the cores of historical cities in the Czech Republic.

As part of the Praha archeologická portal, the MADB data are presented as the Specialised Map Layer of the Researched Area. It consists of data about several thousands of archaeological reference points in the Prague Heritage Area. The particular items are interconnected with the metadata description of the relevant archaeological action (e.g. its head, institution, and dating) and its professional results (especially the discovered functional and chronological components, buildings, and tangible findings). Each archaeological action is connected with the relevant text and picture documents in digital repositories of the Institute of Archaeology in Prague and includes the links to the bibliography database.

What is an archaeological reference point?

An archaeological reference point, simply a ‘probe’, is the fundamental registration and also documentation unit of archaeological research in complex (municipal) terrains. In practice, it may be one or more terrain interventions (a test pit or a vertical section), or else a microinvasive entrance in the archaeological situation (a drill hole or a group of drill holes). The reference point may also be understood as the terrain interventions originally made from a different incentive, e.g. geological or static probes if they consist relevant information for archaeological studies.

A description of the archaeological reference point includes address data, identification by a plot number, and internal identifier of the organisation that carried out the research. Furthermore, there is the author and year of the detailed description, intervention method, and the motion behind. The information about elevation, in particular the base line of the bedrock, the basic stratigraphic and chronological units, and current surface are also parts of the archaeological reference point description.

An identifier of the archaeological reference point is formed by the number of the sheet map in Státní mapy odvozené 1:5000 (Derived State Maps 1:5000) and a four-digit common number. In the original system of Ladislav Hrdlička, the probes were numbered continuously as part of the individual sheet maps; a cohesive line starting from 5001 is used to number the probes registered after 2013.

The archaeological reference point map layer enables spatial choice and spatial negative choice, manual arrangement, and sorting of records as well as multiple-criteria filtration based on pre-defined parameters. The results can be exported from the system in a table of *.csv format where the geometric data is expressed by the WKT chain. The created map set can be also printed through the website browser. The desktop application of AMČR further enables an individual to make choices and search according to all data fields and data classes of the entire information system and to create text statements in *.rtf and *.pdf formats.