La Storia emersa e sommersa: un database per l’archeologia dei paesaggi subacquei.

The Project Liburna Archeologia Subacquea in Albania, created in 2006 by a synergy between Italian and Albanian institutions, has developed over the 2007-2010 period through the scientific coordination between the Department of Human Sciences of University of Foggia and the National Institute of Albanian Archaeology Research Centre. The project has set as its main goal the preparation of an archaeological map of the Albanian coast based on the research data from surveys and excavations. It will provide a Geographic Information System able to manage different investigation areas, through a complex activity of data “systema- tization”, directing the analysis of the spatial location of the underwater evidences through the review of the published and unpublished literature. In this first phase the investigations were concentrated in four main areas spread from N to S along the western coast: Durres Bay, the area of Butrint, the Valona Bay and the Porto Palermo Bay. The realization of an analytical and queried archaeological map, that could provide a storage and allow the search and the rapid contextualization of the scientific data in the territory under investigation, has facilitated the creation and strengthening of analytical tools and data storage in use. The first part of the IT project ended with the implementation of a relational database based on PostgreSQL and a web-based appli- cation developed on PHP platform.The need of a unified approach in the research activities carried out by the archaeological team of the University of Foggia was reflected in a strategy aimed not at implementing a dupli- cation of the resources and tools available. It is therefore currently a restructuring of the repository IREMAS for a regional scale data management. Based on proven methodology used in the landscape archaeology the underwater topographic units (UTS) is the minimum element of the grid for the information standardization, the data collection and their projection in the space. The UTS sheet was divided into generic and descriptive- interpretative sections. It has been related to the tables realized for the storage of the graphic and photographic documentation, underwater finds and literature and historical sources.