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Getting started

Your account

Accounts are created by an Administrator or a Supervisor of your institution. When your account is created you receive an email with your credentials. If you have not received it, check your spam folder, then contact the person who manages users at your institution.

Logging in

  1. Open the platform in your browser and click login in the menu.
  2. Enter your email address and password.
  3. After logging in you land on the home page; the side menu now shows the reserved sections (dashboard, add artefact, add model…).

Forgot your password?

Use the password reset link on the login page: enter your email address and you will receive a message with instructions to set a new password.

Your profile

From Settings you can change your password and update your profile data at any time.

A tour of the interface

  • Home — the public landing page: live counters (institutions, artefacts, models, media), the galleries, and your personal collection workspace.
  • Dashboard (reserved) — your working hub: filterable lists of artefacts, models, institutions and persons, each with quick actions to add or edit items.
  • Map — all geolocated artefacts on an interactive map, with marker clustering.
  • Timeline — chronological browsing through hierarchical time periods.
  • db model — a reference diagram of the database structure.

Your first artefact, step by step

Administrators first

On a fresh installation some vocabularies are intentionally empty, because they depend on the scientific scope of each institution. Before the first artefact can be recorded, an administrator must fill the artefact categories (Category class and Category specification, from the Vocabularies page) and create at least one timeline with its macro/generic/specific periods (from the Timeline page). The other vocabularies (materials, conservation states, licenses…) come pre-filled and can be extended at any time.

The typical documentation workflow goes from the physical object to its digital representations:

1. Record the artefact

From the dashboard (or the side menu) choose Add new artifact and fill in the form:

  • Main data — the inventory number of the original artefact and its description. Keep the description focused on the object itself; interactive content (embedded videos, references, images) goes in the External Links area.
  • Category, typology, material — choose from the controlled vocabularies.
  • Chronological definition — select a timeline and the lower/upper bounds of the dating.
  • Conservation info — storage place, conservation state, object condition, weight.
  • Find site — the provenance of the object: country and administrative subdivisions, parish, toponym, or exact coordinates (longitude/latitude). Geolocated artefacts appear on the map.

Save the artefact. New items start in the Under processing state and can be refined over time; mark them Complete when the record is ready.

2. Add a 3D model

Choose Add new model and:

  1. Fill in the model main data: name, description, optional DOI and citation.
  2. Fill in the object metadata (author, owner, license) and the paradata (acquisition method, software, points, polygons, textures, scans, pictures) — this documents how the digital replica was produced.
  3. Upload the model file in Nexus compressed format (.nxz). The model is displayed in the embedded viewer right after the upload.
  4. Use Take a screenshot to generate the model thumbnail.
  5. Save, then connect the model to its artefact (the dashboard shows which models are still to connect).

3. Attach media

From the artefact page, add images, videos, documents and bibliographic references with the Add media form. Each media item carries its own license and credits.

4. Build a collection

From the home page, create a new collection and add items from the shared pool. Collections can be exported as JSON files and imported back — useful for sharing a curated selection or moving it between instances.

Next: explore the platform section by section in Features.