Horisk have launched a new website and digital tools for Scotland's Rock Art Project (ScRAP) on behalf of Historic Environment Scotland (HES).
ScRAP aims to conduct detailed research on Scotland’s rock art, and to enhance local, national and international awareness of this unique aspect of our heritage. To do this, the project team work with local people and heritage organisations to gather consistent, comprehensive data on all known rock carvings in Scotland using a standardised recording methodology. The database generated through field recording will inform their research, and will provide an accessible resource for the target audience of professionals, students and the wider public.
The project’s digital products and services provide a context for raising awareness of the rock carvings with different audiences, and are pivotal to the success of our data gathering, analysis and sharing.
These include:
- The ScRAP database which was initially populated from existing archives.
- The ScRAP website provides a platform to search the project database and enable users to access information about Scotland’s prehistoric rock art. It has been designed to educate and engage the public by providing details and images of each panel along with mapping to allow them to find the panels themselves.
- The Data Input System allows trained volunteers to upload their data to the ScRAP database, creating a comprehensive record of each carving with multiple photographs and 2D and 3D models.
The digital tools were only made available to volunteer teams in May of this year, but over 100 carvings are already being surveyed, and a number have been validated for import into the Canmore database.
The project was a finalist in the The Herald Scottish Digital Business Awards 2018.
Principal investigator Dr Tertia Barnett said "Horisk have created an invaluable new resource for community co-production of rock art data. The website and data input system are very user-friendly, despite their complexity, and will underpin research and understanding of Scotland’s rock art now and into the future.”
For more details see our Case Study.