Progetto ADaM - Archeological DAta Management Progetto per la creazione di una banca dati relazionale per la gestione dei dati di scavo

The ADaM project stems from the need to create a database for managing all phases of archaeological excavation as free as possible from any type of coercion of a categorical-typological nature or from the rigidity of the structure of the archive itself. The idea of achieving a single and total instrument was at the same time a moment of reflection for a normalization of an excavation reality through a decomposition, or better a synthesis of the various dynamics in a series of relationships. The standards now acquired in the management of the excavation permit to apply to the various phases of archaeological work a system of procedures for storing relational data in order to speed up the collection and further processing of information. In addition to the need to catalogue and archive the material data of archaeological excavation in an effective and articulated way, it was of primary importance, not only for reasons of bureaucratic and institutional type, to be able to produce a paper outcome of such documentation. Therefore the section regarding the printed results of the archives and the export forms is very rich (PDF, XLS, WWW queries throgh PHP instructions). The choice of FileMaker as DBMS and its Advanced Server application have been fairly automatic, not only for the large potential, but also for their previous use in other systems managed by the Department of Archaeology of the University of Padua and also for the familiarity that exists to these programs in the archaeological world. To be able to manage a data-base through four communication protocols ( "fmnet", "instant web publishing", "php" and "xml / xslt") has been valued as a determining advantage. The ADaM project tries to meet all these requirements in the "apparently" simplest way by combining "proprietary" current technologies, which were considered the most practical and effective ones ("fast and easy source"), with technologies of extremely wide circulation and tested reliability typical of an open-source software sector.