Stone Doors Database
About database
This database is dedicated to stone carved doors, which, equipped with various types of rotary axes and holes for locks, performed the same function as their much more common wooden counterparts. In Syro-Palestine, they were mainly used in the Roman and Byzantine period, mostly in tombs.
In the case of many objects collected in the catalog, there is a lack of certainty as to the exact location of their finding. This is a problem, especially in the context of iconological interpretation. Despite the evidence that most of the monuments in question were associated with the tombs, there are also data confirming their probable primary use in buildings of a different nature.
Monuments in the database have unique inventory numbers. The description of individual monuments has a formalized form. At the beginning the name of the archaeological site is given, supplemented with information in which part of Syro-Palestine it is located. Next there was a description of the material from which the monument was made, its dimensions (when the object is preserved partly after the dimension is added the sign "+"), i.e. width, height and thickness, and type of closing (one- and two-leaf types are distinguished). Another element of the description is information about the circumstances of finding a stone door or the type of building it was associated with. Then a brief description of the state of preservation and structural elements, such as rotary axes or holes for locks or handels, is given. The next item contains a characteristic of relief decoration. In the case of doors with coffers arranged in columns, an alpha-numeric record was used to determine their location. For example, "1L" means a coffer located to the left of the first (highest) row. While, "4P" corresponds to the motif on the right in the fourth row from the top. Item "dating" contains available information on the chronology of monuments related to the place of finding a stone door or other data that may be the basis for determining the time of creation or use of the object in question. The last element of the description is to provide literature related to the data concerning the stone door. Some of this information is currently in Polish. Nevertheless, I hope that with time it will be possible to translate them entirely into English.
I suggest to quote individual entries to the database in publications as follows:
M. Gwiazda, Stone Doors Database ( https://chambertombs.uw.edu.pl/details?type=stone%20doors&id=1 ), SD-„Inventory Number”