CIG's Portal to the Past Goes Live!

The Canadian Institute in Greece is very pleased to announce the official launch of its Portal to the Past website, found at www.portal.cig-icg.gr or via the link located on the sidebar of all pages here on the main CIG website. The Portal is the product of over a year’s efforts by a diligent and enthusiastic team who worked together to achieve a concept first proposed by the Canadian Ambassador to the Hellenic Republic, Robert Peck, for a virtual photograph exhibition which conceptually morphed into a website envisioned also to serve as a digital archive for all Canadian archaeological projects operated under the auspices of the CIG.

We are greatly indebted to the personal efforts of Ambassador Peck which resulted in connecting the CIG with the Eldorado Gold Corporation of Vancouver, BC. A generous contribution from Eldorado not only made this project possible but also allowed us to create a custom website tailored to the needs of a broad Canadian and international audiences. The result is a user-friendly platform which contains a wealth of information that we hope will be of interest to not only archaeologists but people who may simply be interested in archaeology and the information that has come out of Canadian projects in Greece.

Throughout the pages of Portal to the Past, the user will find detailed information pertaining to all 18 field projects that have been undertaken during the CIG’s history. These projects cover Greece from north to south, east to west and span from the 9th millennium BCE to the 20th century CE. However, within the framework of each project the visitor will also find a wealth of information including details about each project, directors, publications, excavated material, photographs, and much more. A scan of the various “about” pages at the Portal will explain the purposes of each of the main areas of the site, although the most interesting way to see what’s there is to just start clicking!

What you will find at the Portal is by no means a finished product destined to remain static. In the medium term, it will become trilingual with the implementation of French and Greek versions of the website comparable to the present English one. It will furthermore be a living entity that will continually change as content is added on a regular basis, which will include the latest material from the yearly fieldwork of new and current projects, additional material from older projects, and more imagery from the Frederick Winter B/W Negative Collection. Other collections of images related to Greek archaeology are also contemplated.

We encourage all our visitors to check out the Portal website and explore what it has to offer. At the official launch, Dr. Agiatis Benardou of the Digital Curation Unit of the Athena Research Center in Athens gave a positive critique, which can be read on the CIG’s blog. In particular, she praised the Portal for pointedly addressing the basic user need of convenient and easy access to data. We hope all users have a similar experience and welcome comments!