La catalogazione informatica del patrimonio archeologico

The article presents a brief description of the principal institutions which, during the 1970s and 1980s, were in charge of the computer cataloguing of their respective national cultural heritages, with specific emphasis on archaeological heritage. Particular attention is dedicated to the Italian experience, with some reference to the situation in England and in France during the same period. The 1970s and 1980s are, in fact, two particularly remarkable decades, in which centralised national projects followed the first isolated experimentations, and developed tools, such as lexicons and thesauri, as well as techniques for indexing and information retrieval. The article focuses in particular on the activity conducted in Italy by the Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione (ICCD), as well as that of the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa. As far as England is concerned, the author describes the pioneer research work of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (RCHME), founded in 1908, and, more recently, that of the Archaeology Data Service (ADS); for France, the author focuses on the work conducted since 1964 by the Inventaire général des monuments et richesses artistiques de la France