Ishtar

Team

The core team is composed of 3 members:

• Yann Le Jeune (geoarchaeologist, data scientist), operational project leader, archaeological expertise, documentation, settings and tests
• Étienne Loks (developer, Iggdrasil), technical project leader, main developer, documentation
• Valérie-Emma Leroux (archaeologist and GIS specialist, Iggdrasil), co-operational project leader, archaeological expertise, development, documentation, settings and tests, website

The extended team is composed of several brave testers, who share their archaeological expertise and their good will to report issues and new needs:

• Elisa Caron-Laviolette (PhD student UMR7041) and Ludovic Mevel (CNRS UMR7041), with Étiolles team
• Anne Chaillou (Sous-direction de l'archéologie, French Ministry of Culture)
• Bruno Desachy (heritage curator, French Ministry of Culture)
• Nathalie Huet and Lila Reboul (DRASSM, French Ministry of Culture) and the entire DRASSM preventive conservation team
• Vincent Legros (SRA Hauts-de-France, Ministère de la Culture)
• Christine Redien-Lairé (SRA Nouvelle-Aquitaine, French Ministry of Culture) and the team of the conservation and study centre of Poitiers
• Rachel Touzé (SRA Pays-de-la-Loire, French Ministry of Culture) and the teams of the conservation and study centres of Angers et Le Mans
• Thomas Vigneau (Vendée department)

A great deal of other testers are engaged in the software development as (in 2021) 16 Ishtar instances are in production use and around 30 instances are tested in a broad range of contexts.

Development funding

• From 2011 to 2015, the first years of Ishtar were funded by the Regional Conservation of Archaeology of Pays-de-la-Loire.
• In 2016 and 2017, Ishtar's development was funded by Iggdrasil.
• In 2018 and 2019, Ishtar benefited from a funding by the DRASSM (The French Underwater Archaeological Department), in the context of a call for public tenders won by Iggdrasil, enabling most of the numerous new functionalities. The geographic management of access rights has been funded by the Regional Conservation of Archaeology of Ile-de-France. The generation of stratigraphic relations diagrams has been funded by the Regional Conservation of Archaeology of Hauts-de-France. The re-engineering for the use of newer libraries and the migration to Python 3 has been funded by Iggdrasil.
• In 2020-2021, a major redesign of container management has been funded by the Charente-Maritime department and Iggdrasil. An evolution of documentation management has been funded by the Regional Conservation of Archaeology of Ile-de-France. A Preventive Operator module has been funded by Charente-Maritime department. An ambitious development allowing the syndication of several Ishtar databases has been funded by the Regional Conservation of Archaeology of Nouvelle-Aquitaine. The re-engineering for the use of newer libraries has been funded by Iggdrasil.

A history of the project is detailed in the French version of this page.