So who is our website for?

Dr. Andrea Dolfini explains…

The JISC ‘Cutting Edge’ project will establish an innovative service for the entire HE sector in the UK as well as for students and researchers worldwide. For the first time scholars will have direct online access to comprehensive metadata for an unusually varied range of over 1000 objects, mainly stone and metal, drawn from archaeological and ethnographic collections.  Metadata including high-resolution pictures will focus in particular on the cutting edge (and in many cases the hafting area) of the object. This will support multidisciplinary teaching and research into the analysis of use-wear patterns, and to some extent the manufacturing methods and post-manufacturing technological history of the objects. The metadata archive is primarily intended for the wider community of analysts, metallurgists, ethnographers, prehistorians, conservators, and experimental archaeologists, but users may also include members of the general public such as archaeology enthusiasts and metal-detectorists.

Uses of the online-accessible metadata archive are manifold. These range from Newcastle University students working on artefact-centred projects as a part of their courses to established use-wear specialists, who will be able to select a sample of objects for analysis from their desktop computers. Moreover, the metadata archive will further enhance the role of Newcastle University as a world-leading research institution for artefact studies.  It will also contribute to bringing the extensive collections of Tyne & Wear Archives and Museums, Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle and the Natural History Society of Northumbria to the forefront of international archaeological and ethnographic research. Importantly, inclusion of objects made from different materials, found in different places, and belonging to different periods into the database will allow scholars to cut across traditional disciplinary boundaries and develop new and heterodox pathways to artefact research.