Semantic Technologies Enhancing Links and Linked Data for Archaeological Resources

Abstract

Outcomes from the STELLAR (Semantic Technologies Enhancing Links and Linked data for ArchaeologicalResources) Project are presented. The basis for this research is the need to widen access to archaeologicaldatasets, many of which rarely reach publication. The tools and methodologies presented will allowarchaeologists, other related domains, or non-specialist third parties to cross search different datasetsusing querying tools to ask new research questions of the previously un-connected data. Becausethe data has been ‘semantically enabled’ by mapping it to a Conceptual Reference Model (CRM), suchresearch questions could be of greater complexity and at a broader perspective than previously possible.The conceptual reference modelling also opens possibilities to investigate the basis for more implicitrelationships and interpretations not previously searchable in the underlying data. The semantictechnologies employed are based on standard representations of domain vocabularies and the underlyingcore ontology, an archaeological extension (CRM-EH) of the CIDOC CRM. Methods for mapping datato the CRM and extracting semantic RDF representations from the datasets are described. STELLARtemplates and online applications are presented. The need for controlled terminologies using SKOS W3Cstandards for Thesauri and vocabularies is emphasised and further work on developing a SKOS templateand the potential of user-defined templates for further purposes is discussed.