EAA 2022: Abstract

The paper covers a number open-access databases of the hillforts of the East Baltic region, including Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Kaliningrad region of Russia and Poland. A short overview of the pre-existing databases of hillforts of the region is given with special attention to the “Latvijas pilskalni” project, its structure, methods and philosophy.
“Latvijas pilskalni” was launched in August 2017 with the aim to provide free access to information on Iron Age hillforts in Latvia. The first step was to give online access to the content of four pre-war books on Latvian Hillforts by E. Brastiņš, barely known outside Latvia, as well as to create a hillfort map integrating Brastiņš' work with unpublished data from the Latvian state archives. These data were later supplemented by J. Urtans and recent relevant publications. In the course of the work, the locations of the hillforts were updated using the Latvian Geospatial Information Agency's (LGIA) Place Names Database. The next stage was to refine the coordinates using the digital terrain model layer in the map browser of the same Agency. In August 2019, the planlauf/Terrain software was purchased to create 3D models of the hillforts using LiDAR and orthophoto data freely available on the LGIA website. 3D models and videos of Latvian and Estonian hillforts were created and uploaded to Sketchfab.com and YouTube. The source codes of the models and other related information are freely available at https://opendata.latvijas-pilskalni.lv . As a result, in January 2020, the project received the Latvian Open Technology Association's Private Sector Award of the Year.
The Latvian hillforts project is a prime example of unifying different geospatial and archival sources on the way to the ambitious development of the broader European Hillforts open-access database.

Baltic hillforts, LiDAR, 3D-Modelling, Open-acess database, Archival archaeology, E. Brastiņš

Oral presentation

  Abstract (PDF)

Roman Shiroukhov¹

Gatis Kalniņš²