The Southeast Europe Digital Documentation (SEEDD) Project

Roman history has long been missing a chapter—a chapter that played out in the territory that is today Bosnia and Herzgovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, and Serbia. Birthplace of eighteen Roman emperors, home to no fewer than five imperial palaces, a critical military frontier, and essential player in the development of early Christianity—it was a vital zone of intercultural exchange between East and West throughout the Roman period and a de facto capital of the empire in Late Antiquity. Yet it remains largely absent from traditional Anglo-American narratives of Roman history. To counter historiographic and political forces that have contributed to the region’s unwarranted omission from the historical narrative, The Southeast Europe Digital Documentation (SEEDD) Project seeks to create an integrative database and teaching resource that expands access to archaeological information from this region and raises new questions of extant data. Its transnational and digital format will consolidate information customarily segregated by modern political boundaries, language, and source availability, thereby enabling scholars across the world to visualize and compare archaeological data from a range of sites in new ways.