WOODAN is an online, public database that was established in 2015 as a project funded by the Netherlands Department of Cultural Heritage NL and in 2018 became WOODAN Foundation (Archeologische Houtdatabase WOODAN, https://www.woodan.org/).

The aim of the project is to create an online database of archaeological remains made of wood that anyone can access. The inventory contains available information on wooden artifacts from the place of finding, information on the species of trees used to produce each category of objects, through general characteristics and description in English with bibliography. Photographic and drawing documentation of the artefacts is included, as well as information on research and specialist analysis carried out. In this way, a huge inventory of data is created, which facilitates the identification of wooden archaeological monuments, e.g. it gives the possibility to perform dendrochronological analyses, which clarify the dating of sites and find analogies to wooden monuments, which are rarely preserved on archaeological sites.

In 2021, cooperation with WOODAN Foundation was started by Dr Magdalena Piotrowska. She has thus joined an international group of researchers creating a database of wooden finds from archaeological sites. We warmly encourage all interested persons to send information on wooden archaeological monuments to the following address: piotrowskamagda@op.pl.

The project was initiated in the Netherlands, followed by cooperation with researchers from Belgium, Ireland, Lithuania, Austria, Germany and now Poland. As part of the cooperation with the Polish side, Dr Magdalena Piotrowska will undergo an internship in the Netherlands - training in the analysis and identification of wooden archaeological artefacts. In the first stage of the project the introduction to the database of the wooden artefacts obtained, among others, from the well from the site in Kwiatkowo, commune of Brudzew has begun.

To download the information bulletin of WOODAN.