XRONOS: An Open Data Infrastructure for Archaeological Chronology

XRONOS (https://xronos.ch) is an open data infrastructure for the backbone of the archaeological record – chronology. It provides open access to published radiocarbon dates and other chronometric data from any period, anywhere in the world. By collating a large number of existing regional and global compilations of dates, XRONOS offers the most comprehensive radiocarbon database yet published, with over 350,000 radiocarbon and 75,000 site records. It also provides a foundation for expanding the systematic collection of chronometric information beyond radiocarbon, with support for typological and dendrochronological dates and a generalisable data model that can be adapted to other methods of absolute dating. Automated and semi-automated quality control processes ensure that data from diverse sources is continuously integrated and standardised, making it easier to find information of interest and reducing the need for manual data cleaning by end users. In this paper we describe the concept and implementation of XRONOS in relation to the state of the art in chronometric data-sharing and evaluate its potential as a general-purpose open repository and curation platform for archaeological chronology.