Welcome to a compilation of resources for SEAD data mapping
What is SEAD? The Strategic Environmental Archaeology Database
is a part of Swedigarch, the Swedish national research infrastructure for Digital Archaeology. SEAD is our resource for environmental archaeology data. It is developed and managed at the Environmental Archaeology Lab (MAL) in collaboration with Humlab at Umeå University, Sweden. For more information, see the SEAD web page, or check out the SEAD Browser to explore the data itself.
This web page has been created to serve as a tool to assist with mapping new datasets to the SEAD structure, and is made publicly available for anyone who wishes to better understand the processes used for mapping a new data set to SEAD. Each section of the web page has different purposes:
- SEAD Glossary: Is a collection of terms used in SEAD and/or in database management, with definitions. If you encounter a term used in this page that is not in this list, please let me know.
- Structure of SEAD: Contains pages for each of the tables and columns within SEAD (as of the date of export from SEAD, 2025-09-19). The “Properties” section of each page is a summary of the connections between the the various tables and columns, and is an echo of the information available on the official sead_staging.public page. The primary purpose of this section is to have an illustration of SEAD structure to which I can link information in new datasets during the mapping process.
- SEAD Shape Shifter User Manuel Is an introduction to the Shape Shifter tool for data mapping. It is a tool developed for transforming and normalising data in preparation for inclusion in SEAD.
- Example Dataset Mapping: Contains all of my notes for mapping new datasets to SEAD
- Code used to create project is a summary of the steps taken to export SEAD’s structure for the above Structure of SEAD section
- How to get your data into SEAD gives background information on the datatype currently in SEAD, and things to consider before adding yours.
- Descriptions of files in the SEAD Teams folder/index this file provides metadata for a couple of files stored in Teams that are referenced in a GitHub issue, so that the metadata could be linked to from the GitHub issue.
If you have any questions, you may contact me directly.
—Riia , SEAD Project Assistant/Data Steward
2026-09-01