Diyala Household Records Dataset
A structured dataset of ancient house plans and grave goods for researchers studying old urban areas.
An analysis-ready dataset that converts the Diyala volume's house plans and grave inventories into structured records — floor areas, room counts, phases, associated grave goods — so researchers can run household-level statistics on a fully documented ancient urban quarter. Delivered as a citable, versioned data publication with per-record citations back to the printed plans.
Concept
The volume documents private houses and their associated graves across the Diyala region, with plans and illustrated assemblages — but only as printed pages. The dataset converts each published house into a structured record (plan-derived floor area, room count, courtyard presence, building phase) and each grave into a linked record (burial type, object inventory), with every field carrying a citation to the specific plan or plate. Because the volume documents houses and graves together, each household record can carry its associated mortuary data — the combination that lets researchers study household wealth, inequality, and domestic burial practice at neighborhood scale rather than from scattered single-site reports. The wedge is single: one legacy monograph turned into one clean, citable dataset.
Why now
[0] is the complete published record of an excavated urban quarter's private houses and graves — 361 pages of plans and illustrated assemblages covering whole blocks, which is what makes floor-area and inventory statistics meaningful rather than anecdotal. That household-level data currently exists only on printed pages, so any quantitative use of this canonical corpus requires exactly this conversion, and the same-expedition public-building record in [1] provides the administrative counterpart for comparison.
Written by GLM · 12 Oct 2026
AI assessment
A high-utility, low-risk data conversion project that transforms a canonical archaeological monograph into a structured dataset for quantitative research.
- Evidence strength 5/5
- The idea relies on a specific, existing 361-page volume of plans and assemblages, making the source material concrete and well-defined.
- Market pull 3/5
- The target users are academic researchers and digital humanities repositories; while the need is high, the budget for such datasets is typically limited to grants or institutional funding.
- Novelty & moat 3/5
- While similar to the 'Palace of the Rulers' index, this focuses on household-level socio-economic statistics rather than just provenance, filling a specific gap in urban archaeology data.
- Feasibility 5/5
- The project is a straightforward data extraction and structuring task from a finite printed source, requiring no new technology or field work.
- Wedge clarity 5/5
- The wedge is exceptionally sharp: one specific legacy monograph converted into one specific structured dataset.
- Simplicity / focus 5/5
- The project avoids 'platform' creep, focusing solely on the conversion of a single corpus into a citable record.
Scored by Gemma 4 · 12 Oct 2026. Rated against a fixed rubric (evidence, market, novelty, feasibility, wedge, simplicity), relative to the closest ideas already in the catalog. A prior estimate to compare ideas before real-world signal arrives.
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Who benefits
Home of the Diyala Project, which digitized the expedition's archives; a structured houses-and-graves dataset completes the corpus its researchers and visiting scholars query.
- Open Contextorganization
A peer-reviewed publisher of structured archaeology datasets; this corpus is a natural deposit that extends its Near Eastern holdings with citable, versioned records.
- Seshat: Global History Databankorganization
Compiles cross-cultural data on inequality and social structure; household-level Diyala records with grave inventories give it rare quantified Near Eastern cases.
Research it builds on
- Private Houses and Graves in the Diyala RegionPinhas Delougaz, Harold D. Hill, Seton Lloyd · 2026 · 87 citationsAll ideas from this paper →