Building the Index

The Index contains data that was collected between 1960 and the present, with the majority coming from Oxford University’s Celtic Coin Index project directed by Barry Cunliffe and overseen by Philip de Jersey. This is the second iteration of the CCI online. The original CCI was created by John Hooker and Cathy Perron and was launched in 2001.

The platform for the Index was built between March 2007 and June 2007 by Daniel Pett, ICT Adviser for the Portable Antiquities Scheme with classes from the Php classes website, advice from Andrew Larcombe, inspiration from various museum websites and sites discovered on Google. Mapping inspiration has come from a variety of sources and has been the most interesting part of the development cycle (there’s been some good leads appearing on Sean Gillies blog and the Google maps official blog).

Since January 2007, Ian Leins, curator of Iron Age coins has been cleaning the original CCI data and trying to rectify any identification errors that may have occurred. This has formed the basis of the Iron Age Numismatic overhaul that Oxford ArchDigital have just completed on the Scheme’s database.

The original images have been untouched and if we had any better copies at the Scheme, these have replaced the CCI copy.

Portable Antiquities Scheme data was cleaned and a concordance exercise implemented by Kelly Domoney of UCL’s Institute of Archaeology between June and July 2007. Without this, there would have been many coins in the sea. Kelly also checked that the original data was:

  • on dry land
  • in the right county
  • in the right country
  • ruler x region x area was correct

This showed up several problems with the PAS data and the CCI, and these errors will be rectified as an ongoing exercise of improvement and enhancement. There should be a steady stream of data into the database from July.
The total cost of building this iteration has been £3000 and the time of several people given freely. It has been an extremely rewarding process and I think all involved are pleased with the outcome.

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