Archive desk
A research desk for lost things: hoards, vanished sites, ship losses. It works from archives, old newspapers and open find registers toward a search box on a map, and it stops at the desk.
- Status
- EXPERIMENT
- Year
- 2026
- Stack
- Python · open find registers · digitised newspapers · laser terrain model · vision-language models
One case per lead. An agent sweeps archives, old newspapers, find registers and old maps, reads handwriting with two different models and settles every number on an enlarged crop, keeps a ledger of what each fact rests on, and narrows the question to a box on a map. Then it looks without touching: a published laser terrain model on land, the wreckscan pipeline at sea.
Home ground is Upper Austria. A private map there holds about 5,500 documented sites, 126 finds reported in newspapers between 1850 and 1938, and 233 legends, kept strictly apart.
It never digs, detects or dives. In Austria any search on the spot needs a permit and a qualified archaeologist, so a finished case ends as a dossier for the heritage office. Positions of unrecorded sites are not published. Access to the map is on request, by e-mail to info@joseftot.com.
Write-ups: 233 treasure legends, 126 newspaper reports, one map and Eight models read a letter from 1726.