2026-03-18
Julia Steding, Iza Romanowska, Jean-Baptiste Yon, Rubina Raja
This dataset presents Palmyra’s public inscriptions from the first four centuries CE, a period of time during which the city flourished. The Palmyrene elite used inscriptions to advertise their contributions to public and private building projects, and commemorate the dead. These stone carved inscriptions were written in all the major languages of the region: Palmyrene Aramaic, Greek, and Latin. A total of 1134 public inscriptions have been compiled and digitized by researchers, thus constituting the most comprehensive dataset of the public inscriptions from Palmyra to date. As such, it is a unique source of information about building activities, elite patronage, and the evolution of Palmyrene social structures.
2026-03-04
Olga V. Zaytseva, Evgeny V. Vodyasov, Paula N. Doumani Dupuy, Aidyn S. Zhuniskhanov, Mikhail V. Vavulin, Yerbolat Zh. Rakhmankulov, Andrey A. Pushkarev, Maxim Yu. Polovtsev
This paper introduces the ochre paintings from Kokentau, an open-access archaeological dataset documenting one of the earliest known and most extensive pigment-based rock art assemblages in Kazakhstan. The dataset contains comprehensive photographic documentation and descriptive metadata for 34 outcrops with 75 rock shelters, comprising a total of 702 pictorial figures and abstract signs. These pictographs were created with ochre and other iron-based pigments, and are tentatively attributed to the Early Bronze Age, although their precise chronology remains under discussion. The collection includes high-resolution photographs, DStretch-enhanced images, and orthophotos of pictorial panels, complemented by an attribute table with geographic coordinates and figure classifications. By providing standardized, openly accessible data, the Kokentau dataset supports comparative studies of Eurasian rock art, pigment use, and early symbolic behaviour, and is designed for interdisciplinary reuse within archaeology, digital heritage, GIS, art history, and computer-vision research.
2025-12-18
Timo Homburg, Lukas Ahlborn, Kai-Christian Bruhn, Hubert Mara
This paper introduces the Mainz Cuneiform Benchmark Dataset (MaiCuBeDa) and the Mainz Cuneiform Benchmark Dataset for the Haft Tappeh Collection (MaiCuBeDa HT), two datasets of cuneiform sign annotations on renderings of 3D models of cuneiform tablets. The first dataset includes annotations of the Frau Professor Hilprecht Collection, a collection of cuneiform tablets from different time periods. The second dataset comprises the first publications of cuneiform sign annotations from the Middle Elamite period, as excavated at the city of Haft Tappeh, Iran. Both datasets are prepared for use in machine learning tasks, such as cuneiform sign recognition, and, due to their rich metadata, also for, e.g., time period classifications of cuneiform tablets. At the same time, they might be used for paleographic studies in Assyriology of their specific time periods. All annotations are also available through a web interface, allowing experts to suggest corrections for further dataset iterations.
2025-07-10
James Frances Loftus
This dataset contains 243 silhouette images of Edo-period Ogame (“large jar”) vessels from Hizen and Chikuzen Provinces (modern-day Saga and Fukuoka prefectures), Japan. These thick-walled stoneware jars served diverse functions, from storing soy sauce and fertilizer to containing human remains in burials. The silhouettes were extracted from archaeological site reports and prepared for outline-based Geometric Morphometric (GMM) analysis, a method that quantifies shape independently of size or landmarks. By enabling replicable shape analysis of large, curvilinear ceramic forms, this dataset supports research into morphological standardization, workshop practice, and the intersection of political economy and material culture in early modern Japan.
2025-06-11
Andrea Titolo, Alessio Palmisano
The present dataset contains point geometries of archaeological sites (5,542) in the South Levant. Data were collected from different sources: published archaeological surveys, online databases, excavation reports, and stored in a geospatial database in an open format – geopackage (.gpkg). It comprises information about periods of occupation (site-phase), location, estimated size, typology, and bibliographical information. The dataset is stored on GitHub and Zenodo under an open-access license. For the South Levant, it represents – to our knowledge – the first dataset combining location accuracy, estimated size, and an analysis-ready structure. It can support a wide range of analyses, from simple point pattern to long-term settlement history reconstruction, to multi-proxy studies if combined with other archaeological and paleoenvironmental data.
2025-05-12
Elena Carletti, Giacomo Eramo, Ignazio Allegretta, Luca Forti, Roberto Terzano, Cecilia Conati Barbaro
This work presents the first geochemical characterization data of Scaglia Bianca Fm chert from Central Italy. The dataset is part of the chert reference collection (SiliROck) of Sapienza, University of Rome, and includes 110 chert samples collected from Abruzzo, Latium and Umbria regions. The samples have been previously examined using solely non-destructive techniques: petrographic analysis using a stereomicroscope, and geochemical analysis through portable X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy (pXRF). In this study, we report a comprehensive dataset of geochemical data of chert samples originated in the Scaglia Bianca Fm, open and reusable to researchers to gain a detailed overview of Scaglia Bianca chert for provenance analysis.
2025-03-13
Luka Gruškovnjak, Agni Prijatelj, Petra Vojaković, Jaka Burja, Barbara Šetina Batič, Rok Brajkovič, Borut Toškan, Tjaša Tolar, Helena Grčman, Matija Črešnar
The dataset presented in this paper includes data about macro- and micro-stratigraphy, as well as macro- and micro-artefacts from the Early Iron Age smithy (Building 24, phase IIb2) at the Pungrt Hillfort, Central Slovenia. The data were collected during the archaeological excavation and geoarchaeological sampling at the site, followed by laboratory processing and analysis of the gathered samples. All the data are stored at the Repository of the University of Ljubljana. Their potential lies, on the one hand, in further validation of results presented in the research paper [1] on Building 24 at Pungrt. More importantly, they act as a reference base helpful in recognising distinct lime floor coats and washes, interpreting various micro-stratigraphic earthen and lime-based floor sequences, and identifying micro-refuse materials, especially those related to blacksmithing.