RAÄ

RAÄ supplies dense, Sweden-specific archaeology context from Riksantikvarieämbetet's published Fornsök/Open Data surfaces. The repository publishes a coarse density representation so national archaeological context can be compared without loading hundreds of thousands of individual markers. It is a contextual domain, not direct evidence for a nearby biological sample or a uniform Nordic archaeology layer.

Checked-In Evidence

Surface	Current scale	Meaning
all published sites represented by the source summary	761,917	national registry denominator behind the density product
Fornlämning records	318,265	one governed source classification, not a count of dated events
Fornlämning or possible records	416,913	broader classified subset retained by the normalized summary
density cells	106	one-degree aggregation cells rendered for public context
numeric temporal intervals	0	no repository-owned uniform chronology for same-period comparison

The 761,917 source records are not 761,917 independent, equally dated observations in the public map. The visible product is a 106-cell aggregation, and registry practice, classification, preservation, discovery, and reporting all shape the underlying count.

flowchart LR
    Source["Fornsök and RAÄ Open Data"] --> Capture["capabilities, schema, and domains"]
    Capture --> Summary["normalized national counts"]
    Summary --> Density["106 coarse density cells"]
    Density --> Product["Sweden archaeology context"]

Read A Density Cell

A cell answers a bounded question: how many governed RAÄ records in the selected class fall within this aggregation area? It does not establish:

• a complete inventory of past activity;
• uniform survey or registration effort;
• chronology shared by records inside the cell;
• association with a nearby pollen, lake, fieldwork, or aDNA feature; or
• site-level distance from a feature to every contributing record.

Cell size is part of the result. A one-degree aggregation supports broad national or regional context, not precise local-distance reasoning. Rendering the cell with a smooth color ramp does not increase spatial resolution.

Aggregation Contract

Layer	Observation unit	Defensible denominator	Spatial meaning
source summary	published RAÄ registry record	761,917 records in the governed capture summary	national registry population represented by the capture
classified summary	record in a declared RAÄ class	the selected classification population	classification count, not event count
density layer	one-degree cell	106 emitted cells	aggregate registry density within the cell
map rendering	colored cell polygon	cells admitted to the Sweden product	visual comparison at cell resolution

The transformation changes the observation unit. A statement about a density cell must cite the cell and classification contract; a statement about an individual RAÄ record requires the source record, which the public density surface does not expose.

Retain The Aggregation Receipt

A density comparison is reusable only when the aggregation choices travel with the cell value:

Receipt field	Required meaning
source population	governed RAÄ capture and source classification included
membership predicate	rule assigning source records to cells
grid definition	cell geometry, resolution, coordinate reference system, and boundary convention
numerator	count of admitted registry records in the named cell
denominator	selected source population or comparison-cell population used by the claim
missing and duplicate posture	treatment of unusable geometry, repeated identities, and multi-part records
product identity	publication version and stable cell identifier

flowchart LR
    Records["selected RAÄ records"] --> Predicate["declared cell-membership rule"]
    Grid["versioned one-degree grid"] --> Predicate
    Predicate --> Cell["stable density-cell member"]
    Cell --> Receipt["count, denominator, and aggregation receipt"]
    Receipt --> Context["qualified archaeology-density context"]

Two cells are comparable only under the same source population, classification, grid, and membership rule. Equal color classes from different contracts are visually similar, not necessarily quantitatively comparable.

Audit An Archaeology-Density Claim

1. Identify the Sweden product, RAÄ layer, cell, and classification being read.
2. Confirm the normalized national counts and the density layer use the same governed capture.
3. Treat the cell value as an aggregate count, not a site-level distance or a chronology statement.
4. State the one-degree spatial support and Sweden-only reach.
5. When comparing with SEAD, retain both observation units and do not add their counts into one archaeology population.
6. For a stronger local or temporal claim, return to the appropriate source records rather than interpolating detail from the color scale.

Relationship To SEAD

Dimension	RAÄ	SEAD
reach	Sweden-specific	broader environmental-archaeology context
current public geometry	coarse density cells	normalized site points
temporal posture	density without uniform time	inventory points without captured numeric intervals
strongest use	Swedish registry-density context	wider site-centered archaeology context
invalid shortcut	generalize Swedish density to the Nordic region	infer same-period evidence from undated proximity

The families are complementary and must not be merged into one archaeology denominator. Their observation units, geographic reach, spatial resolution, and capture depth differ.

Governing Surfaces

• data/raa/raw/arkreg_v1_0_wfs_capabilities.xml preserves service capability context;
• data/raa/raw/publicerade_lamningar_centrumpunkt_schema.xml preserves the captured feature schema;
• data/raa/raw/fornsok_domains.json preserves governed domain values;
• data/raa/normalized/sweden_archaeology_layer.json governs counts, cell size, classification, and source identity; and
• data/raa/normalized/sweden_archaeology_density.geojson governs the visible density geometry.

Public maps inherit these scale and chronology limits. Continue to RAÄ exports for the publication role and source comparison before combining RAÄ with another family.