Archaeоlogical Map of Bulgaria – Transport and Pipeline Infrastructure Projects

• Main Author: Nadezhda Kecheva
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of York 2019-02-01
• Series: Internet Archaeology
• Subjects: archaeology; Archaeological Map of Bulgaria; GIS-based archaeological field survey; data standardisation; development-led infrastructure projects in Bulgaria; GIS; field survey; data standards; infrastructure project; Bulgaria
• Online Access: http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue51/2/index.html

When the European Union began to finance transport and pipeline infrastructure constructions in Bulgaria, large-scale development-led archaeological projects emerged. After 2011, many 'polluter pays' projects were executed with the outlined workflow containing preliminary reports and fieldwork activities in accordance with Bulgarian legislation and a defined price list. As part of the process the national 'sites and monuments' archaeological information system 'Archaeological Map of Bulgaria' (AIS AKB) plays an important part as a source of archaeological data for the territory of Bulgaria. This centralised structure controls the quality of the archaeological fieldwork and data standardisation. The aim is to transform the 'sites and monuments' information system to an archaeological geographic information system (GIS) based on geospatial features, largely using an accumulation of standardised data.