The MAIA COST Action are inviting participants to fill out a short survey exploring the availability, accessibility, documentation, licensing, and AI-readiness of digital archaeological collections. 🕔5-10 mins 👉 To fill out the survey visit: forms.gle/1fyFsdWodifsqE4V6

MAIA Survey on Digital Collections & AI in Archaeology

Dear colleagues, The COST Action CA2314 MAIA - Managing Artificial Intelligence in Archaeology (https://maiacost.eu/) is conducting this survey to better understand the availability, accessibility, do...

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📢 Ingest in Practice is back! Thurs 22 Oct, 10–11:30am online. For HSDS users ready to take metadata templates and multi-phased projects further 🗂️ 🔗 buff.ly/2XGQ0iT

🔍 Don’t miss the Heritage Science Insights section, which marks one year of the HSDS Catalogue of Services! Sign up to the newsletter to read more.👇

Archaeology Data Service@ads-update.bsky.social · 6d ago

Don't forget to sign up for the latest ADS Newsletter, which comes out next Tuesday 20th November! ⭐ Inside: 🎉 30 years of the ADS 🔍 One year of the HSDS Catalogue of Services and more! 🎉 To sign up go to the ADS website homepage at buff.ly/4FqVL4L and click the 'Subscribe to newsletter' button!

💫 Featured – RICHeS publishes case study on the HSDS Catalogue of Services! First launched in October 2025, the catalogue makes it significantly easier to find research services across the UK. ⚡ Case study: buff.ly/TStNuAk ⚡ Catalogue: buff.ly/5oj4xw2 @hsds-update.bsky.social

Connecting collaborators through a new digital Catalogue – RICHeS

“Sharing the launch of the HSDS Catalogue of Services with the heritage science community is a major milestone. Since the launch we have already added new features to aid user navigation and support…

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Don't forget to sign up for the latest ADS Newsletter, which comes out next Tuesday 20th November! ⭐ Inside: 🎉 30 years of the ADS 🔍 One year of the HSDS Catalogue of Services and more! 🎉 To sign up go to the ADS website homepage at buff.ly/4FqVL4L and click the 'Subscribe to newsletter' button!

🏺 Trowels to Terabytes! Nicky Garland from the ADS is speaking at UEA's @reproducibilitea.org on the re-use of heritage data at the ADS. 🗓 Tuesday 20 Oct, 2-3pm 💻 Online and free to all - buff.ly/BgQjVq6 ℹ️ Find out more here - buff.ly/9q2QXkD #archaeology #digtialpreservation

Cuneiform was invented in Iraq. A new open-access overview of the world's largest cuneiform catalogue, co-authored by @epp.cdli.network at @ads-update.bsky.social, is out in Arabic in an Iraqi journal, for the people whose heritage it is. Read more in our news story: www.york.ac.uk/archaeology/...

📢 Got questions? Bring them to 'Introduction to Ingest' — ADS, Thu 15 Oct, 10am. Depositing archaeological and historic environment data 🚀 💻 Zoom | ⏱️ 1.5 hrs | 👥 No experience needed 🔗 Register: buff.ly/XjCDBh0

Great to see @nickyjgarland.bsky.social @ads-update.bsky.social lined up for a @ukrepro.bsky.social talk as part of UEA Library Open Access Week 2026 'Trowels to Terabytes: Accessibility and Re-use of Heritage Data at the Archaeology Data Service (ADS)' 20 October, 2-3pm, online 📆

ADS is a world leader in promoting good practice in the use of digital data in archaeology and providing technical advice to the research community. As such ADS staff are encouraged to contribute to a wide variety of publications to publicise ADS activities and share our experience.

Over our first thirty years the ADS has won many awards for our work on preserving and disseminating digital data. In 2012 we won the Digital Preservation Coalition’s Decennial award for the most important contribution to digital preservation AND a British Archaeological Award for Innovation.

The Library was built 2016-2019 as part of Phase 2 of the HERALD project. HERALD was the name given to the works undertaken by the ADS and funded by Historic England as part of its HIAS programme to improve public access to historic environment data.

Digital preservation is at the heart of what we do, and it wouldn’t be possible without our amazing collections and archives team. From archiving collections big and small to raising awareness of the ADS as well as providing critical advice to depositors.

We deliver online and in person bespoke training to research organisations and practitioners in data management and digital archiving. We also have several training videos on our YouTube channel, as well as data management, access, and reuse guides on our website.

Developed by the ADS and partners since 1996, The Guides to Good Practice have been produced in a number of formats. Produced by our amazing standards team, the Guides provide information on the best way to create, manage, and document digital data to enable preservation, access, and reuse.

🎉 The 30th anniversary of the ADS is growing closer, and we are counting down the days with our final highlight of ADS life. This week we are focusing on our teams and achievements across our services, starting with outreach. 🎉

📢 Done your Intro to Ingest training? Level up with Ingest in Practice — Thurs 24 Sept, 10–11:30am online. Real datasets, real scenarios, hands-on practice 🗂️ 🔗 buff.ly/GD1QZja

While the core activity of the ADS is the long-term digital preservation of the data entrusted to our care, all resources archived with the ADS are Open Access, and delivered through our website to facilitate reuse by the heritage sector and wider community.

Not everything you find in our archives are thousands of years old! Our archives also capture what it is like to be on sites and some of the more unexpected visitors you might find. To see what you can find explore some of our 2.5 million records in our data catalogue!

Community archaeology groups across the UK play a significant role in investigating and reporting archaeological remains, contributing important work to our knowledge of heritage and history in the UK. Many reports of community based fieldwork and research are available for free via our website.

The Arch-I-Scan project, developed an image-recognition and machine-learning service, trained using collections from varying social and regional contexts in Roman Britain. This allowed Arch-I-Scan to recognise, record, and digitally collate large quantities of data from ceramic remains.

Early medieval England thus witnessed a golden age of arable farming. How, when and why this transformation occurred are some of the most enduring questions in British agricultural history, but more than a century of landscape-historical research has failed to produce a consensus.

As part of HS2, archaeological investigation took place on the site of St James’s Burial Ground, a major 18th-19th century cemetery site. This led to over 100 archaeologists excavating and recording over 40,000 burials, the largest archaeological excavation of its kind ever undertaken in the UK.

HS2 brought an unprecedented opportunity to explore our past through the country's largest ever linear infrastructure project. As part of this project the ADS has been able to provide a single archive for all the data produced as a result of the fieldwork, safeguarding it for future generations.

We are officially half way through celebrating 30 years of the ADS, and this week we want to focus on our collections and highlight some of our favourites! Starting with The CVMA! Founded in 1949, The CVMA is the international research initiative dedicated to recording medieval stained glass.

To explore available services for your project, use the Heritage Science Data Service's Catalogue of Services: buff.ly/SeACv7G @hsds-update.bsky.social @ads-update.bsky.social

HSDS Catalogue of Services

Search the catalogue to find research facilities and services.

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📢 New here? Start with 'Introduction to Ingest' — ADS, Thu 17 Sep, 10am. Deposit archaeological and historic environment data 🚀 💻 Zoom | ⏱️ 1.5 hrs | 👥 No experience needed 🔗 Register: buff.ly/2pXzCv5

🏺 Collection Highlight 🏺 This week we would like to highlight a recently released archive: Illustrated Artefact Catalogue of Viking Inset Lead Weights from Britain and Ireland. This catalogue sits alongside a related article published in Internet Archaeology, To read more visit: buff.ly/0dvQ2g2

FANTASTIC NEWS! Due to high demand the #AEA Conference has been extended to include all of Sunday 15th Nov. Early bird registration is open until 30th Sept 🤠 Visit: envarch.net/conferences @cifarch.bsky.social @ads-update.bsky.social #EnvironmentalArchaeology #zooarchaeology #archaeobotany

Launched earlier this year, Ingest is our new digital repository deposit system designed to transform how heritage data is preserved and shared. Developed to streamline the process of depositing data and metadata, this system represents a significant advancement in our deposition capabilities.