EuroPreArt's homepage (europreart.net) is a portal to a database packed with details about prehistoric art in Europe. This knowledge bank holds over eight hundred records, thousands of photos, tracings and maps, and a bibliography with more than 2800 references—reflecting a mission to making such information available.

Visitors can explore the site with the uppermost and left-hand navigation bars. The uppermost menu, on the right of the "EuroPreArt" acronym which links to Home (the opening page), has three items: Data (database system), Partners (project organisations), and Help.

The Home page shows the EuroPreArt logo, an animated GIF file where several prehistoric art figures are displayed inside the European flag, and links to the Presentation, Structure and Guidelines papers. From these pages it is possible to download the original EuroPreArt inserting data form, available for documentation and for researchers or institutions interested in using it. Each EuroPreArt Partner has its own page, to introduce itself and its contribution to the general project and to link to its own home page.

The Data item, the most important, leads to a click-sensitive map of Europe and several data retrieval options: a pop-up menu to display one record, a list to display all records (default, ten at a time), and a search to query the entire database for chosen criteria. A second navigation bar appears on the left while viewers browse the Data section, which has five options: Map, List, Record, Search and Biblio.

1. Map. The click-sensitive map of Europe highlights Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. This works a bit like a Geographic Information System: a click on any coloured country opens a set of records about it; a click outside these retrieves unfiltered records for all seven countries. Some of them have a second-level click-sensitive map displaying different areas. A click on any tinted area retrieves records for that zone; clicks outside the tinted areas retrieves records for the whole of that country.
2. List. This lists all the content in the database’s main text fields: name, country, area, region, keywords, description, and figures. Clicking a sequential record number or name displays the details (see next point). The listing is customisable: viewers can browse through ten, twenty, or more records at a time and sort them by name, country or area, in ascending or descending order. Internal navigation arrows lead to the first, previous, next, or last page.
3. Record. This browses the database record by record, dynamically generating each one and displaying a formatted page that arrays text from the database with related pictures (GIF and JPG file format). The general structure, sections and fields mimic the initial data insertion form. There are internal navigation arrows (first, previous, next, or last record) and supplementary details (filtered/unfiltered status, record number, total number records). A pull-down menu lists all records, allowing viewers to jump quickly to another. If a click-sensitive map of the country exists, an icon under the country name links to it. In this view, the horizontal edges of pictures are less than 200 pixels. A click on any image will pop up one with a higher resolution, having a maximum horizontal edge of 550 pixels and a maximum vertical edge of 450 pixels. Another click on the enlargement returns to the record. Under the bibliography section it is possible to activate three bibliography filters: each record (references specifically related to one engraved/painted rock), each country, and all references.
4. Search. The search features are quite broad. It is possible to place keywords or short groups of words in the main fields: name, area, keywords, chronology, etc. Searches are case insensitive (e.g., " lascaux", "Lascaux", "lAscauX", or LASCAUX") and allow partial matches (e.g., "cam" for Val Camonica or "lasc" for Lascaux). Search capabilities include options such as whether all fields must match (the ".and." option) or if at least one field must match (the ".or." option). Searches set the retrieval status to "filtered", only showing matching records. The bibliography search features are nearly identical.
5. Biblio. The system has three bibliography filters: record (references related to a prehistoric art surface or object), country, and all titles. The listing is customisable: viewers can browse through ten, twenty, or more records at a time and sort references by author, year or title, in ascending or descending order. Internal navigation arrows lead to the first, previous, next or last listing. Searches also work on author, year and title. An indication showing the active search filter (a xBase expression) appears overhead.

From each page of the EuroPreart Web site it is possible to reach the main menu (the upper navigation bar is always present) or any database surfing option. The whole structure is planned to show in the simplest way the records of the prehistoric art and bibliography databases, by a geographic intuitive interface or by the search select criteria.

An Apache Web server (www.apache.org), running under Linux, powers the EuroPreArt site. BASERUNNER (www.baserunner.com) provides the search and information retrieval capacity that dynamically generates page content from the database. The entire content (as of February 2002) and retrieval features are available on an auto-play CD-ROM.