The Andrew W Mellon Foundation has awarded 250,000 US dollars to the study led by Julian Richards, head of the university's department of archaeology and co-director of online journal Internet Archaeology.

Prof Richards is looking at ways of using online publication to allow researchers to link their work to databases, video, audio and other information as well as stimulating academic debate.

The latest research will build on work completed as part of
an earlier award-winning project, Linking Electronic Archives and Publications, or Leap, which was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council under its ICT Strategy programme.

Prof Richards said: "We're very excited about this project as it will allow us to work with North American archaeologists to create novel ways of publishing their research findings.

"It builds on the success of the original Leap project, which won Best Archaeological Innovation and was highly commended in the Best ICT Project category at the 2008 British Archaeological Awards."

The project will run until March 31, 2011.

Internet Archaeology, hosted by York University, was established in 1996.

It has over 70,000 hits per day to its pages from more than 120 countries.