SEAD is led by the Environmental Archaeology Lab (MAL) at the Department of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, Umeå University. The database is hosted, and software development undertaken, by HUMlab at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. Additional work on dendrochronology is being led by the National laboratory for wood anatomy and dendrochronology (LWD) at the Department of Geology, Lund University.
The database aims to provide a National Infrastructure for Archaeological Science data, and act as the main data provider within the ArchLab Consortium of archaeological research laboratories.
Current funding
The Old Wood in New Light project is expanding the dendrochronological data capabilities of SEAD. Project led by Lund in collaboration with Sweden’s dendrochronology laboratories, and with systems development and database work in Umeå. This work is funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond.
Umeå University provides basic maintenance funding for SEAD to ensure access to the database and use support.
Tools for connecting fossil and modern biodiversity data are funded by The Swedish Biodiversity Data Infrastructure (https://biodiversitydata.se) (Swedish Research Council through Grant No 2019-00242).
Connectivity between SEAD and the European Infrastructure for Archaeological Data ARIADNE+ is being funded by the European Commission under Horizon 2020 Grant Agreement n. 823914.
SEAD is also involved in establishing connections between Heritage Science and Archaeology in the IPERION-HS European Infrastructure for Heritage Science, funded by the European Union, H2020-INFRAIA-2019-1, under GA No. 871034.
Previous funding
The Riksbankens Jubileumsfond funded VISEAD project (2016-2019) was a collaborative venture uniting four archaeological research laboratories of the Swedish ArchLab Consortium in a joint data management initiative. The project developed considerable improvements to SEAD, including the current browser technology..
The SEAD infrastructure was initially funded by the Swedish Research Council (VR) under the Database InfraStructure Committee (DISC) and Council for Research Infrastructures (RFI) as part of a national drive to advance high quality, accessible, scientific research cyberinfrastructures and encourage data use and re-use. (Grant numbers 2007-7494 and 2010-5976). VR also provided a planning grant in 2005 which lay the foundations for the project (grant number 2005-5745).
Previous work on the systems analysis and digitalization of ceramics and dendrochronology data has been hosted by The Department of Geology at Lund University, including the funding of a post-doc position and co-financing of the dendrochronology pilot project.
Interdisciplinary connectivity aspects of SEAD were developed in collaboration with the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded CyberNABO and DataARC projects. This included the development of API connections between SEAD and DataARC for the dissemination of data to new audiences internationally.
