Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Anglo-Saxon Kent Electronic Database

The ADS, the AHRC and the Leverhulme Trust are pleased to announce the
online launch of the Anglo-Saxon Kent Electronic Database (ASKED):

http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/archive/asked_ahrc_2008/

This database was created by Stuart Brookes and Sue Harrington to facilitate
their respective PhD researches at UCL Institute of Archaeology, from
1998-2000. This online subset of the data acts as the pilot for a larger
corpus of material currently being gathered under the aegis of the 'Beyond
the Tribal Hidage Project'
(http://www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/project/tribal-hidage/index.htm) - a
Leverhulme funded research project undertaken at UCL Institute of
Archaeology by Martin Welch with Sue Harrington. This further dataset will
also be deposited with the Archaeology Data Service in late 2009, in the
same fully searchable online format as this version of ASKED.

The resource at the heart of ASKED is the archaeological evidence for the
Anglo-Saxon populations of east and west Kent AD 400-750. The evidence
consists of the human skeletal remains, the grave goods and the burial
structures from inhumation cemeteries. ASKED brings together various sources
in one unified and accessible dataset. A subset of 53 cemetery sites are
prioritised here together with isolated burials, settlements and find spots.
Whilst the user may not find, for example, a complete list of every artefact
found in Kent, they will find all coherently published examples.
This database already represents a fantastic new resource for the study of
Anglo-Saxon Kent and England more broadly, and it will continue to grow both
in size and usefulness with further deposits of data in the coming months.

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