Pre-Project for a National Rock Art Research Infrastructure (ImAge)

The pre-project will explore the potential for, and how, a National Norwegian Research Infrastructure for rock art (ImAge) that embraces both prehistoric petroglyphs and painted motives, can be developed and implemented as a tool and resource for the research environment. The Rock art Research Infrastructure will unify all archaeological sources of relevance for rock art research within a joint national digital interface. The pre-project will amongst others explore how substantial amounts of archaeological data and other such sources at the University Museums, the Directorate for Cultural Heritage and the County administration can be utilized and migrated into the research infrastructure. There is an ambition to develop digital methods for comparative and chronological analysis, that can be implemented into the infrastructure, and how data capture from image and document archives can be integrated. It will also be investigated how AI and image analyses can be adapted, adjusted and be incorporated into the infrastructure. Despite the fact that the main focus for the infrastructure will be the research environment, ImAge will also be made available for the management environment of cultural heritage, museums, all sectors of education and other institutions that might be provided a beneficial outcome from the infrastructure.

Pre-ImAge will explore the creation of a novel humanistic national research infrastructure, which responds to the need of a digital infrastructure for rock art research, dissemination and data management. The field of rock art consists of a wide range of data; rock art sites and archaeological material in museum collections, documentation and archival material, and scientific and popular disseminations. The proposed future research infrastructure will unify these diverse categories and features, by digitising and exploring rock art sites and archival material from all the university museum collections in Norway and at the World Heritage Centre - Alta Museum. In order to create such an infrastructure there is a need for coordination, dialogue, testing and networking among the partners in Norway, but also with other national and international, institutions' research groups and infrastructures. The pre-project will explore the possibilities, perspectives and organisation of such an infrastructure. Based on the feedback from earlier applications, workshops and empirical testing, the pre-project will create a base for a full FORINFRA application in 2025. The pre-project is coordinated from the University Museum of Bergen. The partners and collaborators in the pre-project are all Norwegian university museums , the World Heritage Rock Art Centre - Alta Museum and the Directorate for Cultural Heritage (Riksantikvaren). This ensures a robust and long-term structure, as well as a national and international impact.