IUENNA

openIng the soUthErn jauNtal as a micro-regioN for future Archaeology

Web Mapping Portal ARCHE Repository IUENNA Refiner Project Blog

100+

Years

of archaeological research

20,000+

Items

digitized & archived

200+

Sites

recorded in the Jauntal

400+ GB

Geodata

openly accessible on ARCHE

Project Overview

IUENNA was an innovative initiative that advanced digital methods in Austrian archaeology. By addressing complex cultural-historical questions, actively shaping Digital Humanities in Classical Studies, and ensuring long-term preservation of cultural heritage, IUENNA fostered sustainable knowledge management.

The project focused on the archaeological micro-region of the Jauntal (Carinthia, Austria) and was funded by the Austrian Academy of Sciences' Go!Digital 3.0 program.

Project Leadership

The IUENNA project was coordinated by Dr. Dominik Hagmann (kärnten.museum) and Dipl.-Ing. Franziska Waldhart (Austrian Archaeological Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences).

Activating Legacy Data: The Curation Workflow

Archaeological documentation is often distributed across fragmented physical archives, legacy databases, and obsolete digital formats. The IUENNA project addressed this challenge by developing a reproducible, staged curation framework. Instead of creating new primary data, the project focused on systematizing and safeguarding existing holdings, converting them from passive storage into an active, citable research infrastructure.

Through a standardized process of provenance appraisal, folder reorganization, file-name normalization, and spatial validation, diverse analogue and digital resources were brought into a common, structured framework. By depositing this consolidated corpus in A Resource Centre for the HumanitiEs (ARCHE), the project ensures the long-term preservation and digital durability of these micro-regional archaeological records.

Curation Workflow

Inventory and selection of available source materials
Normalization of folder structures
Standardization of file names
Metadata drafting and harmonization
ARCHE repository deposition
Publication of web-mapping discovery layers

IUENNA Collection Dashboard

Live metrics reflecting the curated collection resources, derived from the openly accessible geodata.

Status: 2025-04-04 (Updated: 2026-06-14)

Subjects (n = 0)

Distribution of different categories (subjects) across all resources.

Coverage (Locations) (n = 0)

Distribution of all resources across different spatial locations.

File Formats (n = 0)

Breakdown of file types (e.g., .tif, .jpg, .gpkg) used in the dataset across all resources.

IUENNA Collection Details

The IUENNA collection was the first initiative of its kind in Austria, consolidating research spanning far over 100 years from more than 200 archaeological sites, primarily (but not exclusively) in the Jauntal/Podjuna Valley, Carinthia. In the course of the IUENNA project, every feasible effort was made to digitize and preserve as much available material as possible. This included over 20,000 items—excavation reports, geophysical surveys, 3D models, and retro-digitized archives—ensuring their long-term accessibility for future research.

The data is organized into six semantically defined subcollections: Hemmaberg (HB), Globasnitz (GLO), Jaunstein (JAU), Sankt Stefan (STE), Jauntal (TAL), and Retrodigitalisate (RET). These subcollections feature a detailed and reusable file folder structure for comprehensive data management. Each resource is enriched with freely accessible, globally available, detailed, machine-readable metadata in adherence to the FAIR and CARE principles.

Explore Data on ARCHE

Project Framework

The IUENNA project was a collaboration among:

IUENNA established a model for sustainable, open archaeological data management in the Digital Humanities.

Collaborative Artificial Intelligence & Web Development

The creation and continuous optimization of this web presence were realized using modern Generative AI (GenAI) tools, specifically Large Language Models (LLMs), and pioneering development paradigms such as Vibe Coding. In this approach, humans act as creative directors collaborating with AI systems and LLMs to build complex code architectures efficiently, bypassing manual routine programming.

The agentic AI coding assistant framework Google Antigravity (powered by LLMs such as Gemini 3.5 Flash and Claude Opus 4.6) served as the technical backbone. Operating as an autonomous co-pilot, Antigravity analyzed the repository, designed the unified styling system, and carried out the technical consolidation of the web pages. Additionally, the custom GPT IUENNA Refiner (powered by the ChatGPT 5.5 Instant) was developed as a specialized, domain-specific assistant to clean, format, and validate the underlying archaeological metadata and GeoJSON structures, ensuring consistency across all integrated geodata resources. This synergy between archaeological expertise and agentic AI support showcases new, future-oriented workflows in the Digital Humanities.

Key Points Regarding Our Use of GenAI:

Human-AI Collaboration: LLMs assisted in designing the user interface, cleaning up redundant stylesheets, and implementing the autocomplete filter.
Academic Oversight: All AI-assisted code structures and textual content were reviewed, validated, and approved by the project leadership.
Transparency: We are committed to openly disclosing and documenting the use of digital assistants in our research workflows.

References

Argote, D. L., López-García, P. A., Torres-García, M. A., & Thrun, M. C. (2025). Machine learning for archaeological applications in R (1st ed.). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009506625
Caluori, L. (2024). Hey Alexa, why are you called intelligent? An empirical investigation on definitions of AI. AI & Society, 39(4), 1905–1919. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-023-01643-y
Ciccone, G. (2024). ChatGPT as a digital assistant for archaeology: Insights from the smart anomaly detection assistant development. Heritage, 7(10), Article 10. https://doi.org/10.3390/heritage7100256
Cobb, P. J. (2023). Large language models and generative AI, oh my!: Archaeology in the time of ChatGPT, Midjourney, and beyond. Advances in Archaeological Practice, 11(3), 363–369. https://doi.org/10.1017/aap.2023.20
Fawzy, A., Tahir, A., & Blincoe, K. (2025). Vibe coding in practice: Motivations, challenges, and a future outlook -- a grey literature review (arXiv:2510.00328). arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2510.00328
Gattiglia, G. (2025). Managing artificial intelligence in archaeology: An overview. Journal of Cultural Heritage, 71, 225–233. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.culher.2024.11.020
Hagmann, D., & Reiner, F. (2023). openIng the soUthErn jauNtal as a micro-regioN for future Archaeology: A «para-description». Peer Community Journal, 3, Article e120. https://doi.org/10.24072/pcjournal.338
Meske, C., Hermanns, T., Von Der Weiden, E., Loser, K.-U., & Berger, T. (2025). Vibe coding as a reconfiguration of intent mediation in software development: Definition, implications, and research agenda. IEEE Access, 13, 213242–213259. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2025.3645466
Sarkar, A., & Drosos, I. (2025). Vibe coding: Programming through conversation with artificial intelligence (arXiv:2506.23253). arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2506.23253
Tenzer, M., Pistilli, G., Brandsen, A., & Shenfield, A. (2024). Debating AI in archaeology: Applications, implications, and ethical considerations. Internet Archaeology, 67. https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.67.8
Zoldoske, T. (2024). Metadata for discovery: Planning for an information network. Internet Archaeology, 65. https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.65.6
Zubrow, E. (2024). A prolegomenon on archaeological complexity and disorganization: Fragmentation and missing data. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 31(2), 689–706. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-023-09636-3