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, check out the SEAD web page, or check out the SEAD Browser to explore the data itself.
This web page was developed 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. The “Properties” section of each page is a summary of the connections between them, and is an echo of the information available on the official sead_staging.public page. The primary purpose of this section is for linking information in new datasets to SEAD’s structure 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 a new dataset to SEAD
If you have any questions, you may contact me directly.
—Riia , SEAD Project Assistant/Data Steward 2026-02-23
PS. In the long run it is hoped that the links between the various SEAD tables and columns in their meta data (Properties) will transform into working links between them on this web page. The developers of Quartz, the tool with which this page was built, tell me that feature will come in the next release. In the meantime, to follow the links you can copy the name of a table into the search bar for the page.