The ARIADNE Infrastructure has been in existence for just over 18 months and it’s time to take stock of achievements to date.

The ARIADNE Infrastructure network was launched on the 12th February 2013 in Rome at an event witnessed by over 100 attendees. In the 18 months that have passed, 772 people have directly participated in ARIADNE activities such as workshops, the Trans-national access summer schools and the Stakeholder Survey – this does not include people who have attended presentations at over 90 conferences and other events attended by the various partners. The website has attracted nearly 10,000 unique visitors and there are over 200 followers on Twitter, many of whom are happy to retweet @ARIADNEnetwork announcements.

The major activities and achievements of the past 18 months are:

  • Workshops organised at EAA, Pilsen, and CHNT, Vienna to introduce ARIADNE to the archaeology community and increase awareness of the services and tools that the network offers,
  • Three TNA training weeks on CIDOC-CRM, 2D/3D documentation for archaeology and Design of archaeological datasets,
  • Provision of access to several online services with training guides,
  • Twenty-four organisations have collaborated with or signed co-operation agreements with ARIADNE,
  • Survey and report on Stakeholders Needs in which nearly 700 people responded.
  • Sixteen publications on topics related to ARIADNE.

For the next year, planned activities will include building on the existing work and expanding the Infrastructure further. There will be a second set of TNA workshops for summer 2015 and several Good Practice Guides are planned as well on topics as diverse as 3D Datasets and Dendrochronology and Scientific Analysis. Training of researchers in use of the ARIADNE infrastructure will continue with a series of workshops to be held at international conferences, the next of these being held at EAA, Istanbul in September.