Digitising Provenances: A Mini Citizen-Science Project at Heidelberg University’s Collection of Classical Antiquities

The Collection of Classical Antiquities at Heidelberg University was founded in 1848 and consists of about 1,200 large-scale plaster casts (copies) and 9,000 original Greek and Roman archaeological objects. A collection of letters and an acquisition list, the so-called Old Inventory, provides information about when, where, and by whom those objects were acquired. It is the most important source of the provenances, the objects, and the history of the collection in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But only by transcribing those historical documents and identifying the objects listed they can be put into use. The paper presents those processes that took place in the course of a mini-citizen project, actively involving the audience interested in the project.