The main intention for this point of
view has been the development of a unified scientific
approach to the documents. All methodical particularities
have been taken into account without any limitation to
a particular timeframe or period. The division of (rennaissance)
documents, (modern scientific) publications and photos,
as seen in the
CENSUS,
is therefore abolished technically and regarding content.
The selection of monuments in the THERMAE data collection
is arising from the content of the documents. It is not
dependent on the size or the preservation of particular
monuments, but primarily on their identification as
thermae
in the visual sources. Instead of speaking of a group
of monuments or a class, it does make sense much more,
to speak of a monument concept, which is represented especially
well by a very few buildings. One may expect, that there
existed something like a average model of
thermae,
but this would be a fact, which cannot be extracted from
the existing documents. Instead there is a very small
number of heavy documented monuments and a
long
tail of very vaguely documented monument concepts.
The THERMAE data set contains over 10'000 document-monument
classifications. and will be published online.
