Harald Ingholt’s Excavation Diaries from his Fieldwork in Palmyra – an Open Data Online Resource

Abstract

In the 1920s and 1930s, the Danish archaeologist Harald Kai Ingholt (called Harald Ingholt, 1896–1985) excavated in Palmyra, Syria. During his field campaigns of the Southwest necropolis in 1924, 1925, and 1928 he kept diaries—six in total. These have been digitized, translated, and commented on within the framework of the 'Palmyra Portrait Project', and have been published in print for the first time. Through the documentation of the excavations and Palmyrene material culture in the form of annotations and drawings, these diaries offer unique insight into Ingholt’s work on the Palmyrene graves and their sculptural and epigraphic evidence. Ingholt’s documentation of ground-plans, inscriptions, and finds are supplemented by his notes on the daily (excavation) life, thus offering pictures of early twentieth century excavation practices and the local environment that can now be explored as an open data resource, since we with this article make them available through figshare.

Keywords

• palmyra
• archaeology
• excavation
• digitization
• online resources, open data, fieldwork diaries
• archival material