The RomAniDat network: a zooarchaeological Big Data initiative for the ancient Roman world
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| Year of publication | 2023 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | Zooarchaeological research serves as a compelling methodology for the reconstruction of past human dietary habits, hunting methods, domestication of animals, and environmental changes among other purposes. This enables researchers to delve into the intricate interactions between human and animal life over time, thereby unveiling crucial facets of ancient human societies, their evolutionary process and impact on biodiversity. As zooarchaeological data is accumulated opportunities arise to investigate aforementioned phenomena at various scales. This, in turn, requires that a collective effort is made amongst the experts within the field of zooarcheology to devise and execute strategies for effective data collection, aligned with Open Science, FAIR, and CARE principles. This paper outlines the RomAniDat initiative, a collaborative network amassing zooarchaeological data pertaining to the ancient Roman world. It consists of an organized network of independent databases, assembled according to spatial parameters and dedicated to accumulating data relating to faunal abundance. Data, synthesized from the different databases, is disseminated via the Pandora data platform, which also supports methods for data visualization, summarization, and analysis. The first publication of the RomAniDat initiative featured faunal data from Italy, covering the period from 500 BCE to 500 CE (Schmidtová et al. 2023). Since then, the RomAniDat network has broadened its scope to include additional databases focused on Roman Netherlands and Great Britain. This presentation aims to provide an overview of the RomAniDat initiative, highlighting its current status and illustrating its research potential through modelling case studies. Furthermore, it will briefly outline potential future trajectories for the initiative. |