UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE

African Archaeology Archive Cologne

to the archive >>>

At the Department of Prehistoric Archaeology, University of Cologne, research in African Archaeology started in 1963 on rock art in Namibia, which later yielded the world’s largest documentation and publishing project, “The Rock Paintings of the Upper Brandberg” (1977–2006). In addition, "Settlement history of the eastern Sahara (BOS)" (1979–1993) as well as the Collaborative Research Centre 389 “ACACIA” (1995–2007) were long term interdisciplinary special research units that focused in particular on human-environment relations, initially in North-East and later in South-West Africa as well. The ‘Africa Research Centre’ (Forschungsstelle Afrika), established in 1984, harbors an extensive collection of archaeological documentation and excavation reports from these and numerous other individual projects. A prolific amount of dissertations on these materials have been published by the centre’s own publishing house, the Heinrich-Bart-Institute (15 large-format monographs on the rock art of southern Africa and its archaeological context, and 20 volumes on the Prehistory of Africa). Until 2012, all these materials were only available in analog format.

In complying to CARE principles and meeting substantial international interest, the African Archaeology Archive was established and took up the task of digitizing this legacy data, archiving it and making it online available through close cooperation with the German Arcaeological Institute (DAI) and its iDAI.world.

With the help of an elaborate curation pipeline, genuine digital images and photographs as well as digitized photographs and documentations are ingested into iDAI.world’s principal data base iDAI.objects and connected norm databases iDAI.gazeteer, iDAI.chronontology  and iDAI.bibliography. This ongoing work has until 2025 made over 100,000 images digitally available, as well as over 4000 searchable archaeological sites and an elaborate framework of over 400 African archaeological periods, in compliance with FAIR standards.

Raw data is meanwhile stored with the help of IANUS (Research Data Centre Archaeology & Ancient Studies) as well as the repository services of the Regional Computing Centre of the University of Cologne (RRZK). Throughout all funded projects, the Data Center for the Humanities (DCH) has been an invaluable and active cooperation partner, thus providing necessary coding support where necessary.

Special Priority Programme (SPP2143) Entangled Africa

The Special Priority Programme “Entangled Africa” is a multidisciplinary archaeological programme funded from 2019–2026 by the German Science Foundation (DFG). The aim of the programme is to explore intra-African relations and networks of the last 6,000 years up to the beginning of the colonial period. Whereas the other 11 projects pursue a wide variety of archaeological and intredisciplinary topics, like paleaobotanics and archaeolinguistics, researching various archaeological phenomena and their interconnected dynamics, FAIR.rdm aims at integrating archaeological research data digitally.

Compliance to the FAIR and CARE principles is secured by collaboration between DCH and AAArC at the UoC and the use of platforms of iDAI.world as well as dissemination through ARIADNE.RI.

 

The African Archaeology Archive is a cooperation between: African Research Centre (Prof.Dr. Anne Haour), Data Center for the Humanities (DCH) and Heinrich-Barth-Institut e.V.
Coordinator: Eymard Fäder

Publications of the AAArC project

• Eymard Fäder – Lukas Lammers – Tilman Lenssen-Erz – Brigitte Mathiak – Eleftheria Paliou – Felix Rau, Research Networks, Strategies and Solutions of the FAIR.rdm Project in SPP 2143 “Entangled Africa”. (J. Sigl – J. Linstädter (eds.), Entangled Africa – Intra-African relations between rain forest and Mediterranean, ca. 4000 BCE – 1500 CE. Archäologische Forschungen in Afrika (AFA) 2). (in print)
• Lukas Lammers / Eva Reinke / Eymard Fäder, Archäologisches Forschungsdatenmanagement in der Praxis: Das Projekt FAIR.rdm im SPP2143 „Entangled Africa“, Archäologische Informationen 45, 2022, https://doi.org/10.11588/ai.2022.1.95251
• Eymard Fäder, Friederike Jesse & Tilman Lenssen-Erz. Learning through connecting: data management as a basis for meaningful use of legacy data – The African Archaeology Archive Cologne. Proceedings of the session n° III-3 (CA) of the XVIII° UISPP congress, Paris, June 2018 Session III-3 (CA). Construire des référentiels partagés: Webmapping et archéologie. DOI: 10.21494/ISTE.OP.2019.0353
• Tilman Lenssen-Erz, Eymard Fäder, Friederike Jesse & Joana Wilmeroth., Digital Management of Rock Art: the African Archaeology Archive Cologne (AAArC) African Archaeological Review 35.2 (2018), 285–298. DOI: 10.1007/s10437-018-9303-5
• Tilman Lenssen-Erz, Eymard Fäder & Friederike Jesse (2018) Aus dem Diaschrank in die digitale Welt. Das African Archaeology Archive Cologne (AAArC).  In: Jürgen Richter (Hrsg./ed.) 111 Jahre prähistorische Archäologie in Köln. Kölner Studien zur Prähistorischen Archäologie 9. Marie Leidorf; Rahden/Westf.: 330–337.
   

Funded by:

2012–2017, DFG, LIS Programm
2019–2025, DFG, SPP 2143, "Entangled Africa"
2021–2022, Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek im Rahmen des von der Beauftragten der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (BKM) geförderten Programms NEUSTART KULTUR
 

Principal Investigators, 2012–2026:

Tilmann Lenssen-Erz, Rudolph Kuper, Øyvind Eide, Brigitte Mathiak, Felix Rau, Eleftheria Paliou
 

Team, 2012–2026:

Jan Kuper, Oliver Vogels, Maya v. Czerniewicz, Friederike Jesse
Simon Hohl, Johanna Dreier, Tim Piccolini, Andreea Darida, Norman Klahre, Joana Wilmeroth, Finn Severin-Prox, Tjaark Siemssen, Eva Drunagel, Funda Askin, Simon Kellers, Paul Thelen, Lukas Lammers