Pottery data sets from Jerash, Jordan within the Mediterranean frame

Submitted by Annette Højen Sørensen, Aarhus University, Denmark

The Danish-German Jerash Northwest Quarter Project was initiated in 2011 by Prof. R. Raja from Aarhus University, Denmark and Prof. A. Lichtenberger from Bochum University,  Germany and is a transnational project which includes several scholars of various  disciplines.

The finds of the excavation spans the periods from the Bronze Age until the late Medieval period within the pottery repertoire with a strong emphasis on the Roman, Byzantine and  Umayyad periods. The terminologies chosen for the registration and in particular in the  project database thus has to bridge many periods in terms of wares, shapes, decorative  patterns and chronological periods and has to reflect the terminologies in use for the  pottery throughout these periods in the Eastern Mediterranean region. The need for  standards in pottery descriptions has been dealt with in the discussions surrounding the  beginning of the excavations and again during the development of the database which will be in function in January 2015. The round table discussion about global standards  within the pottery research and the dissemination process of excavation results is thus a  good opportunity to discuss and develop future standards. With the divers pottery  repertoire in Jerash Jordan at hand the project will be able to feed in to and benefit from  structured linked data sets using a set of global standards.