The ArchaeoBioInformatics Group at the LMU München

Background and Objectives

The massive increase of data originated from the diverse findings at sites all over the world has led to a dramatic bottleneck in managing all this data in terms of storing, retrieving and analyzing it. Current methods from Computer Science, especially in the area of databases and data mining, provide huge potentials for benefiting Archeobiology research. Storing Archeobiology data in dedicated databases can facilitate the retrieval, the publication, and the analysis of this data and may offer completely new possibilities to make use of the data.

The development of methods for search, retrieving, and analyzing these data can only be achieved by a tight and steady collaboration and discussion between Archeobiologists and Computer Scientists. The Archaeo-Informatics group at the LMU aims at stimulating and moderating this dialog between Archeobiology and Computer Science. It is connected to the Database and Information Systems Group of the Institute for Informatics on the one hand and to various researchers from Archaeobiology through LMU’s ArchaeoBioCenter (ABC), including e.g. Archaeogenetics, Archaeozoology, Archaeological State Collections, etc., on the other hand.

In general, the ArchaeoBioInformatics group at the LMU München aims at supporting the partners of the ArchaeoBioCenter (ABC) with IT services for storing, managing, searching, and analyzing their data.

Current Projects

OSSOBOOK

OSSOBOOK is a database tailored to the needs of archaeozoologists gathering a massive amount of data from faunal analyses. It has emerged from an initiative of Prof. J. Schibler of the IPNA (University of Basel, CH) in 1997 and is now a joint project between the IPNA and the LMU München. In December 2009, the European Research Network BioArch, a collaboration of the leading European Archaeobiologists, decided to use OSSOBOOK as a common technical platform for data management. Currently, the project deals with

• the internationalization of OSSOBOOK
• the standardization of data coming from different research groups
• the development of data analysis tools

Database support for the Bavarian State Collection of Zoology

To be announced.

Literature

[1] Jörg Schibler: OSSOBOOK, a database system for archaeozoology. In: P. Anreiter, L. Bartosiewicz, E. Jerem, W. Meid. Man and the animal world: Festschrift für Sandor Bökönyi. Archaeolingua. Budapest 1998, 491-510.

[2] Jana Lamprecht: Conception and Implementation of an intermittently synchronized database system for palaeoanatomic usage, Diploma Thesis, Institute for Informatics, Ludwig-Maximilans-Universität München, Germany, 2008.

[3] Peer Kröger, Hans-Peter Kriegel, Obermaier Henriette, Joris Peters, Matthias Renz, Christiaan Hendrikus van der Meijden: OSSOBOOK: Database and Knowledge Management Techniques for Archaeozoology. In Proc. 18th ACM Int. Conf. on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM), Hong Kong, China, 2009.

[4] Hans-Peter Kriegel, Peer Kröger, Christiaan Hendrikus van der Meijden, Henriette Obermaier, Joris Peters, Matthias Renz: Towards Archaeo-Informatics: Scientific Data Management for Archaeobiology. In Proc. 22nd International Conference on Scientific and Statistical Database Management (SSDBM), Heidelberg, Germany, 2010.

[5] Hans-Peter Kriegel, Peer Kröger, Christiaan Hendrikus van der Meijden: Experiences and Visions in Archaeo-Informatics. Microsoft E-Science Workshop, Berkeley, CA, 2010.

Team

Partners

• Prof. Dr. Joris Peters, LMU München
• PD Dr. Kerstin Pasda, LMU München
• Dr. Henriette Obermaier, State Collection for Paleoanatomy
• Prof. Dr. Jörg Schibler, IPNA, University of Basel
• Barbara Stopp, IPNA, University of Basel