Antiquity in drawings, maps and architectural surveys: primary documentary materials of the 19th and 20the century in the German Archaeological Institute at Rome

Introduction

Historical archive

Portrait of a woman
Triclinium O of Casa di
L. Caecilius Iucundus, Pompeii
(A-VII-32-016)

Among the comprehensive scientific holdings of the German Archaeological Institute, Department Rome are the two collections “Historical Hand Drawings” from the period of 1829-1912 and the “Mappings of the Architecture Department” from 1953-2000.

The drawings, aquarelles, maps, cross-sections, etc. of the two collections show ancient buildings and objects that document sites and finds that have been changed or destroyed in the course of the last year. Thus, they are particularly important for the single monuments and also form part of research history.

Drawings, sketches, maps, copies of inscriptions, and aquarelles of the department “Historic Hand Drawings” were mostly made in the 19th and early 20th century for the “Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica”. They depict ancient artistic and daily-life objects, inscriptions, paintings, topographic finds and buildings that came to light during the excavations or were part of scientific discussion of the time.

DThe collection was created as a manual index and was particularly important before the invention of photography. The creation of the collection is part of the organization of the ‘Instituto’, which saw it’s primary purpose in the scientific publication of new excavations and discoveries. For this purpose, a network of corresponding members in Italy and other places was formed that were able to inform the Rome department of news in graphic and textual form.

The far-reaching local dispersion of the correspondents, among which were scholars as well as many educated amateurs that came from various cities and region, was of importance. Professional illustrators were sent to particularly meaningful sites by the head of the Rome department in order to ensure an adequate documentation of the buildings and monuments. Just part of the thus created documents found their way into the publication of the institutes while others remained unpublished.

Catalog historial drawings

Archive of architects

Temple of Hera I/Old temple of Hera/Basilica, Paestum
B-41-47-005

The collection of ‘Hand Drawings’ is closely linked to the collection of ‘Drawings of the Architecture Department’. It contains illustrated documentation of all fieldwork projects of the Rome Department of the German Archaeological Institute since its reopening in 1953. The mappings, sketches and photographs document cityscapes (excavated), monuments but also architectural fragments from the period of the 8th century BC to Late Antiquity and depict architectural decoration from Italy, Tunisia and Algeria. The publication of the results of the fieldwork projects took place in the form of monographs and preliminary reports. Due to the thematic purpose especially in the preliminary reports, the graphical documentation of the highest standard of the investigated cities, monuments or architectural fragments could only be published in part.

Catalog archive of architects

Aims of the project

Contextualization of a drawing

The ca. 6.000 pages of the historic collection as well as 3.500 select pages of the Architecture Deparment were recorded in an archive and catalogued in ZENON-DAI The digitized drawings are included in ARACHNE’s iDAI.bookbrowser, scientifically contextualized and also made accessible for the long term. Through Arachne the material is also connected with the EU-initiatives CARARE and Europeana as well as made accessible within the CLAROS network The main objective of the project is the digitalization and web-base access of the holdings of the two collections through the iDAI.bookbrowser, aside from long-term archiving. The virtual presentation of the hard to access archive materials is realized through the transfer and provisioning of the digitized media in Arachne as well as the integration of bibliographic metadata in an open-access-environment. Parallel to the actual creation of the archives, the thematically coherent drawings are accumulated into overarching folders that contain links to the single pages. The recording of the single drawings follows the same system as the ZENON-DAI. The datasets in ZENON are linked with the digitalized media in Arachne. All bibliographical data is also integrated into PropyleumSEARCH eingebunden. Both holdings of the drawing’s collections are made accessible in Arachne in a scrollable fashion. The extension of the programming of the bookbrowser allows for the individual depiction of the bibliographic metadata next to the scientific context as well as its accessibility. This adjustment increased the performance and extent of the iDAI.bookbrowser even for archives with heterogenous material and varying objectives of depiction due to their character. Scientific contextualization is undertaken by the linking of folders – on the first level – as well as the pages of the bookbrowser – on the second level – with the original monuments. Each object is connected with the depicted dataset. The information network is extended on the one hand through contextualizing structures between the drawing’s dataset, object, georeferencing, dating, collections and on the other hand through descriptive depictions through a possible combination with datasets of scenes and multi-part monuments and buildings or fragments of buildings. The contents of the folders are structures with the TEI-Editor. The drawings are navigable through an interactive table of contents.

Partners

German Archaeological Institute – Rome Department
Supervision: Dr. Thomas Fröhlich

University of Colonge, Archaeological Institute - CoDArchLab
Supervision: Prof. Dr. Reinhard Förtsch

Employees of the project

Francesca Garello – Librarian at the German Archaeological Institute, Rome Department
Marina Unger – Research employee in the area of Classical Archaeology, German Archaeological Institute, Department Rome
Sebastian Cuy – Research employee in the area of IT, CoDArchLab, University of Cologne
Shabnam Moshfegh Nia – Research employee in the area of Classical Archaeology, CoDArchLab, University of Cologne
Fabian Zadovink – Research assistant in the area of IT, CoDArchLab, University of Cologne