Annual conference of the Association of State Archaeologists
NFDI4Objects as a guest at the VLA conference on 3 June 2025
The annual scientific colloquium took place on 3 June 2025 as part of the annual conference of the Association of State Archaeologists (VLA). The topic of the colloquium was ‘Research data management in the field of tension between science and administration’. The conference dealt with questions and challenges of digitisation and research data management in the field of state archaeology. The day was filled with interesting presentations on topics such as FAIR Data and Open Data, legal framework conditions such as the Online Access Act (OZG) and their impact on data management in heritage conservation, as well as standardisation issues and discussions on controlled vocabularies. Promising services and tools were also presented that are intended to facilitate the (digital) work of archaeological heritage preservation, such as the FundLogBuch app and the QGIS plugin Tachy2GIS.
The annual conference of the VLA enables the archaeological heritage authorities in Germany to exchange ideas and discuss common challenges, guidelines and potentials. In addition to the general meeting, the commissions also meet to work on various topics such as excavation techniques, handling of archaeological cultural heritage or archaeology and information systems, and jointly develop guidelines and recommendations on the various issues. Said recommendations and other documents can be found on the VLA website. The public scientific colloquium held as part of the annual conference offers the wider community insights into current topics that are of cross-cutting interest to state archaeologists.
NFDI4Objects was invited to give several presentations as a guest on the occasion of the colloquium’s main topic ‘Research data management in the field of tension between science and administration’: Phillip von Rummel explained the similarities and differences between FAIR Data and Open Data. Stephanie E. Metz and Uli Himmelmann from TA4 explained how the INSPIRE guidelines on Protected Heritage Sites will be integrated into the standards and interfaces for the exchange of data from the field of heritage conservation which are being promoted by NFDI4Objects, and which gaps these interfaces will fill. Kristina Fischer and Lasse Mempel-Länger, also TA4, presented the benefits of semantic terminologies for transnational cooperation. Andreas Puhl (also TA4) presented a poster on the results of the survey on site and monument data standards in Germany, which was conducted in March and April of this year to determine the status of how monument and site data is structured and described in Germany. More information on the survey can be found here, and the poster presented at the colloquium has been published on Zenodo. In addition to the survey, the community cluster ‘Denkmal-, Maßnahmen- und Schutzflächen/Protected Heritage Sites’ was also presented on a poster. The Community Cluster brings together the specialist community of the state offices from the fields of archaeological and architectural heritage conservation and other interested parties who are working together to develop the standards and interfaces for data exchange within heritage conservation. In addition, Frank Dührkohp (TA5) presented the services of the VZG in the field of research data management.
In addition to the exciting conference programme, there was also plenty of time to exchange ideas with colleagues from the various federal states. We would like to thank the organizers for the event and invitation!