Digitally preserved heritage as a novel approach to the investigation and curation of collections – a multi-domain database of cuneiform tablets

摘要

Virtualization of collections resolves the conflicting requirements between the need to preserve artifacts for future generations and the need to make them accessible to the public as well as researchers. Robust data collection acquired by means of methods from several domains promises to carry out an in-depth investigation on a dataset as opposed to on the real objects themselves. A multi-domain database of data relating to Prague's collection of Hittite cuneiform tablets is developed in the presented research project. The database record contains not only data related to linguistic, paleographic and historical content of the tablet’s textual information, but also stores information on physical properties of the tablet acquired by several nondestructive methods. The paper presents two application of the data acquired: in the first case, we show the investigation of relations between the tablets' colors and their composition and possible implication of grouping within the collection. The second case discusses modalities of use of volumetric data obtained from computed tomography (CT). It can be useful for paleographic research as well as for conservation of artifacts.