In order to comply with European legislation on Open Data and the re-use of public sector information (Directive 2019/1024) and to implement the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) principles, the QUANTAS research team (https://pepadb.us.es/#quantas) recognised the need to make data from decades of archaeological research available to the public.
The implementation of these procedures, within a rigorous policy of data curation, has been realised through the web-based provision of an online archaeological database with open access.
It is a free and accessible web-based tool that provides users with Late Prehistoric funded research data of PEPAdb (Prehistoric Europe’s Personal Adornment database) project.
It can be accessed through the following URL: https://pepadb.us.es/database.html
The PEPAdb project focuses on the elements of personal adornment in Late prehistory, made from rare and exotic raw materials, and how their production, distribution and consumption were articulated, as well as their relationship to the incessant process of change in the structure of socio-economic relations.
The raw and processed data are available both on the official PEPAdb website (https://pepadb.us.es/#opendata) and in a Zenodo (https://zenodo.org/records/10545573).
The flow chart illustrates this entire methodological process.
This GUI was created using Bootstrap 5 (https://getbootstrap.com/) framework and the Bootstrap Table extension (https://bootstrap-table.com/).
As far as the functionalities are concerned, the first graphical element present in this web tool is a search box. This allows you to make queries to the database. It has two widgets for this purpose: a button to carry out the search and another to clear the results of the previous search. At the same time, it is possible to manually select the records in the enabled boxes. Next, there is a widget, represented by the icon of an arrow pointing down, which allows to show or hide the default pagination of the archaeological records in the interface. There is also an additional pagination widget at the bottom of the interface, which allows you to choose between displaying 15, 50, 100 or all available records. In order to simplify the use of this tool, a functionality has been implemented to reload or update the selected records by deselecting all records. It is also possible to select the columns of interest using a drop-down menu.
It also allows users to perform advanced searches by specifying several variables in a pop-up search box. It is worth noting that the data retrieved can be printed either manually, from the search box or from the advanced search menu. Similarly, selected data can be copied to the clipboard. In addition, a button has been activated to sort the records according to the values of the variables. This functionality is very useful to sort the archaeological structures in ascending or descending order according to the number of pieces found in each of them. It is worth highlighting the possibility of downloading data in open data formats such as JSON, XML, CSV, TXT and SQL. The fact that data can be exported in an open format not only encourages re-use by users, but also greatly increases interoperability, as the data can be easily retrieved and processed by other systems.
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Question 1: How do I access to the database?
Answer: Through the following URL --> https://pepadb.us.es/database.html -
Question 2: How often do we update the database?
Answer: Monthly
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Project leader: Carlos P. Odriozola Lloret (codriozola@us.es)
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Data curator: Galo Romero García (galorom@us.es)
PEPAdb online database and data are licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
