What PHOTARCH is, and why it exists
Archaeological artefact photography has no universal standard. An object documented at one institution looks different from the same type of object at another — different backgrounds, different lighting, different angles, different scales. The result is a visual record that cannot be compared.
This is not a minor inconvenience. It is a structural problem for research, conservation, and institutional memory.
PHOTARCH is a photographic method for archaeological artefacts: a few principles that, followed, give uniform photographs that can be measured, again and again. Most objects in the archive are documented using the same controlled setup: one key light at half past ten and 45° above, a pure white ground, a ColorChecker read at capture, and the scale taken from a digital caliper on the object’s longest side, or from the board in the picture. Sides are defined — Front, Back, Top, Down, Left, Right and the four angles at the corners — so that the same object type is always documented the same way, regardless of who captures it or where.
The result is a visual dataset that behaves like data — not a gallery.
Objects photographed by the PHOTARCH method can be published, by the organisations that hold them, in an open, machine-readable archive. Public access is free. Images and metadata can be referenced and cited by anyone; downloading needs a free account. The archive is built on persistent identifiers (NAAN 73195) so that references remain stable over time.
PHOTARCH is developed and operated by Milvus Productions AB in Ystad, Sweden. The method is developed by Daniel Lindskog (daniellindskog.com).
Every object in the PHOTARCH archive receives a persistent ARK identifier under NAAN 73195. These identifiers are designed to remain resolvable over the long term, independent of URL structure or platform changes.
Every published picture and every download now carries a C2PA seal, countersigned by an independent timestamp authority, stating how the picture was made and what one pixel measures. The measurement travels as Image Scale Metadata, an open format PHOTARCH publishes and anyone may implement, and the published files carry their full record as XMP — so a picture can be read and measured wherever it ends up, without asking the archive. Objects enter the archive through the PHOTARCH app.
Objects publish as Linked Art (CIDOC-CRM) in JSON-LD, with material, technique and period mapped to the Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus. LIDO and Europeana EDM export for organisations. Embargo dates that lift themselves on the day they name. A register of where the physical object is kept, alongside the photograph of it.
The PHOTARCH app pushes an object to the archive with its master, its measurements and its record; Sync keeps the two in step afterwards, and a picture replaced in the app is replaced here without losing its identifier. Pinned notes, attachments and 3D models travel with it. Deep zoom is cut from the master on arrival and served over IIIF.
Canvases arrange objects at true relative scale and can be embedded in another site, as can collections. Organisations define their own metadata themes and fields, and decide which of them are internal.
The desktop application moved from Electron to a native macOS build: photograph, measure, validate, adjust and export, with every picture told plainly what it is fit for, what holds it back and what was not measured at all. In development.
The phone becomes the camera. Photographs land on the Mac as they are taken, over the local network or a cable, and the object is named at the shutter rather than back at the desk. In development.
Google OAuth on login and signup. Researcher role with gated TIFF downloads. Public downloads capped at 1 MB JPEG. Newsletter opt-in at signup. Live object and institution counts on auth panel.
Archive opened without login gate. Public landing page for guests. Invite a colleague flow. Math captcha on all public forms. Navigation progress bar. Feedback form on account page. Angle image upload flow.
Interactive map with location picker. Timeline slider on archive. Data model v2: fragment support, external identifiers, IIIF readiness. Mobile pinch-to-zoom.
Archive grid with filter and freetext search. Object detail page with hero, metadata, scale bar, and gallery. Comparison viewer with true relative scale. Downloads with scale bar. Colour extraction and colour search. Dark mode. Admin edit page.
Initial build: Next.js + Supabase. Authentication and admin dashboard. Ingest pipeline with bounding box editor, crop step, and automatic colour extraction.
Milvus Productions AB · Org. nr 559505-9485 · info@photarch.com