The archaeological excavation report of rigny: An example of an interoperable logicist publication

Abstract

The logicist program, which was initiated in the 1970s by J.C. Gardin, aims to clarify the reasoning processes in the field of archaeology and to explore new forms of publication, in order to overcome the growing imbalance between the flood of publications and our capacities of assimilation. The logicist program brings out the cognitive structure of archaeological constructs, which establishes a bridge between empirical facts or descriptive propositions, at one end of the argumentation, and interpretative propositions at the other. This alternative form of publication is designed to highlight the chain of inference and the evidence on which it stands. In the case of the logicist publication of the archaeological excavation in Rigny (Indre-et-Loire, France), our workflow can provide different levels of access to the content, allowing both speed-reading and in-depth consultation. Both the chains of inference and the ArSol database containing the field records that provide evidence for the initial propositions are visualized in a diagram structure. We rely on the International Committee for Documentation Conceptual Reference Model (CIDOC CRM) entities for ensuring the semantic interoperability of such publications within the Linked Open Data. Inference chains are mapped to CRMinf and ArSol records are mapped to CRM, CRMSci and CRMArcheo. Moreover, as part of the work carried out by the French Huma-Num MASA Consortium, a project is underway to allow the building of logicist publications starting from a graphical interface for describing the structure and content of propositions.