DESCRIPTION

Zbiva has been actively developed since 1987 as an archaeological database for eastern Alps and its surrounding regions in the early Middle Ages. It is focused on the sites in Slovenia, Austria, on the NW Croatian coast, and in the NE regions in Italy. For comparative purposes sporadic sites from the neighboring areas and previous era are recorded. It consists of three parts that constitute a whole: archaeological sites, graves and artefacts. The initial version v1 was a closed system based on a single PC. The version v2 was designed in year 2000 in order to facilitate the transition to the web offering only parts of content, namely sites and bibliography. Version v3 (2016) has grown into an online service that enables searching for data on sites, graves and artefacts and their real-time mapping. It was therefore about the on-the-fly creation of distribution maps and corresponding lists with descriptions. Descriptions of individual sites, graves and artefacts could be supplemented with images, which means the offer of an online catalog. Version v4 (2023) connects all tables, combines input, search and mapping. It runs entirely online. All data changes are updated continuously, so the latest status is always available. Mapping search is available to visitors, and registration is required for the input.

The web application Zbiva is intended for highly motivated research not only into structured information but also into "hidden" data. They can only be found with the correct search term, which we have to create with our own imagination. There are many basic and advanced search options for this purpose.

For more detailed description see: Štular, B., The Zbiva Web Application: a tool for Early Medieval archaeology of the Eastern Alps. − In: J. Richards, F. Niccolucci, The Ariadne Impact, Budapest, 2019.