The majority of scientific articles currently published in specialised journals represent only the ‘tip of the iceberg’ of long term research projects. These articles are extreme interpretative syntheses of evidence based upon quantitatively significant sets of data and images. The complete publication and the diffusion of these databases in printed form generally requires considerable time and money. Consequently, access to these precious archives of information is often only guaranteed to a restricted number of specialists.
The Digital Archives of Human Paleobiology (DAHP) are intended to facilitate the circulation of qualitatively and quantitatively comprehensive sets of data and images of anthropological, paleobiological, and paleoanthropological interest to specialists, researchers, students, and to institutions such as museums and universities.
In keeping with the spirit that ‘what any monographic report should provide is the wherewithal for colleagues to reach their own conclusions’ (B. Wood, 1991, in Koobi Fora Research Project. Vol. 4. Hominid Cranial Remains. Oxford: Clarendon Press, p. 3), the main objective of the DAHP is to periodically make available, in an easily usable and interactive form, exhaustive scientific documentation of (paleo-archaeo)anthropological research from different (particularly methodological) backgrounds, conducted on representative collections or on single specimens of special interest. The ultimate goal is to permit full use of the information provided and to stimulate further independent observations, analyses, elaboration, remarks, criticisms, interpretations, and comparisons.
The corpus of the DAHP consists of: brief introductory/explanatory texts; methodological protocols; standardised sets of macro- (including radiographs, CTs, 3D-reconstruction, etc.), and microscopic images; (histo)morphometric analytical databases; digital elaboration; figures (original and elaborated); graphs; tables; and related extended bibliographies. Each CD-ROM will also include specific routines and ‘help’ functions to facilitate access to, and interactive use of, the ‘archive’.
Rather than the scientific interpretation of results, which are more appropriately discussed within specialised journals, the DAHP attempt the in toto ‘virtual export’ from museums and laboratories of single specimens or entire anthropological collections, investigated and documented using the most advanced analytical techniques.
The DAHP were created within the framework of the ‘Cultural Heritage’ Project, promoted and supported since 1996 by the Science and Technology Committee for Cultural Heritage of the Italian National Research Council (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche).
