the DAI Chinese Archaeology Database

CHARDA-Xplore

CHARDA-Xplore

We are happy about your interest at CHARDA-Xplore. In the following you will get some short information about the project.

The Chinese Archaeology Database (CHARDA-Xplore) began as part of the research project 'Chinese Metal' (CHIME), located in the research-cluster 2 of the DAI, and was originally designed to collect and document the available information on early Chinese metal finds.

CHARDA-Xplore basically serves as a collection of standardized and geo-referenced archaeological information, providing the possibility to analyze these data statistically and to map spatial and temporal distribution patterns.

Only three basic parameters are necessary for creating a site entry: site name, from which a site-ID will be created, geographical coordinates (latitude and longitude) and date of the site, finds/objects or a sub-site.

By the use of a link to Google Earth satellite imagery the database provides mapping of sites in connection of its date. This way of representation is extremely suitable to visualise the migration of find-properties in space and time.

As Google Earth maps the complete Earth's surface the scheme of the database CHARDA-Xplore is also in the way applied, that it can capture archaeological data of any region in the world. Deciding and differentiating are only the catalogs, that is concept-lists to classify the properties of finds. The created and deposited catalogs contain up to now german and in the future also english and chinese terms for describing common archaeological circumstances as well as finds of neolithic- and metal-periods in east- and central-asia. 

The easy way of including images, adds to the database simultaneously the character of a systematic and extensive itemized image-archive. 

We decided to create the input- and query-tool with optical structures that are well known to an average computer user. CHARDA-Xplore contains a tree-view at the left side that is known from the windows-explorer to navigate through the information in the database and also a query-field that is the same such at every famous internet-search-engine. The catalogs are created as abstract as possible but at the same time as specific as needed. To grant the database a maximum lifetime of using as a datastorage and researchtool through users with different educational background in computer-technology and to grant it a highly practicable way of data-input and -query, the database is self-explanatory, extensible and easy to connect to other databases.

To use this functionality of CHARDA-Xplore you have to register only once.