Kerameikos.org editor extended to support Getty ULAN linking

This morning, the Getty Museum announced the release of the Union List of Artist Names (ULAN) into their new linked open data publication system. As soon as I had a few minutes free, I updated the Getty SPARQL lookup mechanism in the Kerameikos.org editor to extend the XForms component for querying the ULAN to link painters and potters in Kerameikos to Getty URIs. The updates were pushed into production in less than five minutes.

Now that lookups to the Getty and British Museum SPARQL endpoints and the VIAF RSS feed are available for people, I was able to create the id for Kleitias in about a minute (having also extracted preferred labels from dbpedia).

For a bit more information about how this works under the hood:

If you are editing a foaf:Person concept, the link to the Getty ULAN lookup will appear under "Import" in the right sidebar. If a preferred label has already been empty, clicking the Getty ULAN link will automatically query with the provided preferred label, otherwise you can enter your own string. The query string is passed into an XForms instance containing the following SPARQL query:

PREFIX gvp: <http://vocab.getty.edu/ontology#>
PREFIX skos: <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#>
PREFIX luc: <http://www.ontotext.com/owlim/lucene#>
PREFIX ulan: <http://vocab.getty.edu/ulan/>
SELECT ?c ?label ?scopeNote WHERE {
?c a gvp:PersonConcept; skos:inScheme ulan: ;
gvp:prefLabelGVP/xl:literalForm ?label ;
skos:scopeNote/rdf:value ?scopeNote ;
luc:term "SEARCH_QUERY"} LIMIT 25

The luc:term is the property used to query a Lucene index. The query is sent to the Getty SPARQL endpoint via an XForms submission, and the XML response is then represented graphically as a table of results with checkboxes to include as skos:exactMatch. The checkboxes are not really necessary for the Getty lookup, as we can probably assume there is one URI per entity, but the mechanism is carried over from the VIAF lookup. VIAF has not fully disambiguated entities across all authority records.

Kerameikos updates

Ontology

After much discussion of the Kerameikos list, we are moving forward with the initial proposed set of classes in the ontology, plus one: ProductionPlace. A production place in Kerameikos is a theoretical concept. It may be as specific as a workshop, if it can be ascertained, or as generic as a large region, such as West Greece. Presently, there are four pottery-specific classes in the ontology besides ProductionPlace: Shape, Style, Technique, and Ware (still under debate). There are a variety of classes borrowed from CIDOC-CRM, such as E4_Period.

The complexity of instances in the Kerameikos id namespace is variable. Shapes and places are relatively simple. Techniques, styles, and periods can be built from the ground up--starting simply, but with the potential for greater complexity. For example, the Black Figure technique is invariably composed incision and silhouette, also techniques. A style, like Marine Style, has a single identifier in a system like the Getty AAT, but is a combination of concepts: it is a particular decorative style from a particular place (Crete), culture (Minoan), and period (Late Minoan), which falls in the Bronze Age (which has vague absolute dates attached).

The Kerameikos editor allows for the creation and linking of these concepts on a simple level, but I am to extend the editing functionality to enable more complex typologies.

Concept Schemes

Previously, the Kerameikos id namespace (http://kerameikos.org/id/) was the landing page for browsing the collection, but it now resolves to a skos:ConceptScheme. It is possible to use content negotiation to get this scheme in RDF/XML, Turtle, and JSON-LD. The browse page has been moved to the browse/ pipeline.

The introduction of concept schemes into Kerameikos.org will enable the next iteration of ids. We plan to begin attributing concepts in the id namespace to bibliographic references, i. e., to link painters and potters to references that identify them. This means that in the near future, we'll introduce a 'work' concept scheme. We'll be able to link ids to Worldcat or JSTOR URIs. In the case of Worldcat, at least, we'll be able to extract bibliographic and authority RDF metadata from OCLC. The attribution of ids is absolutely necessary for the project, and will likely open up other avenues of inquiry. In the future, one might get a list of all painters identified by John Beazley or identify all vases found in Vulci that were published in 1890-1900.

Data Dumps

Data dumps are linked from the home page. The Kerameikos.org data are available in RDF/XML, JSON-LD, and Turtle. The Pelagios dump is now available as well, although only a few production places are linked to Pleiades.

Roman cooking ware terminology, function, real use: problems and solutions for standardization, recording, sharing

Submitted by Laura Banducci, Carleton University

Kerameikos.org has focused thus far on creating and connecting data about Greek painted pottery; it could be extended to serve usefully in Roman pottery studies. In Roman pottery there are similar complexities of language differences (within ancient languages, and among modern researchers) which create obstacles to knowledge sharing. In the case of some wares, namely cooking vessels, we also have substantial cultural differences which befuddle attempts to associate like form with like form. For example, a casserole in North American English can mean two very differently-shaped vessels. Then, in Italian the idea of a casseruola only applies to one of these English forms. The term “casserole” itself has a particular food associated with it. There are cooking jars versus cooking bells, pans, versus trays, etc. The examples of this are myriad.

Furthermore, the understanding of function and use is quite a significant facet in many research questions regarding cooking wares, since food and cooking can touch upon technology, environment, and cultural identity. Yet function and use are typically understood from the observation of form. These formal definitions are wrapped not only in our own cultural biases but also frequently in the connections we have drawn between vessels named in ancient texts and artefacts (Bats 1988). Yet, scrutiny of Latin sources reveals that “patinae” “ollae” or “testa” are used in inconsistent ways (Donnelly Forthcoming 2015), thus their strict association with certain shapes, recipes or food groups is inappropriate.

This paper elucidates these problems and proposes several solutions for the roundtable. I suggest a standardized way of choosing terms for shape using specific physical descriptions. Next, a major way to contribute to the understanding of both intended function of these vessels and their actual ancient use, is to add the study of use-wear analysis to ceramic study as a standard practice. Use-wear analysis or “ceramic alteration analysis” (Skibo 1992) is increasingly acknowledged to be the next logical step in the close study of utilitarian vessels (Lis 2010; Pena 2014; Swift 2014; Banducci 2014). Traces of wear can be combined with observations made about form to determine use.  This type of analysis also has the potential to reveal multi-functionality, including both contemporaneous multiple uses of one object as well as the use of an object for its non-intended purpose. The difficulty has been in creating a recording system to observe essentially qualitative data (the observation of different types of wear) in a quantitative way. The recording system is comprehensive enough to admit wide variability while also sufficiently well-defined to permit focused analyses of characteristics within and across the dataset. This system was inspired in part by the framework used by conservators completing surveys of the conditions of artefacts in museum collections. Databases of wear and morphology have the potential to be scalable to many different types of archaeological vessels – tracking function, use, use-life. Disseminating systematic ways of observing and recording this information requires a robust digital platform like kerameikos.org.

Pottery data sets from Jerash, Jordan within the Mediterranean frame

Submitted by Annette Højen Sørensen, Aarhus University, Denmark

The Danish-German Jerash Northwest Quarter Project was initiated in 2011 by Prof. R. Raja from Aarhus University, Denmark and Prof. A. Lichtenberger from Bochum University,  Germany and is a transnational project which includes several scholars of various  disciplines.

The finds of the excavation spans the periods from the Bronze Age until the late Medieval period within the pottery repertoire with a strong emphasis on the Roman, Byzantine and  Umayyad periods. The terminologies chosen for the registration and in particular in the  project database thus has to bridge many periods in terms of wares, shapes, decorative  patterns and chronological periods and has to reflect the terminologies in use for the  pottery throughout these periods in the Eastern Mediterranean region. The need for  standards in pottery descriptions has been dealt with in the discussions surrounding the  beginning of the excavations and again during the development of the database which will be in function in January 2015. The round table discussion about global standards  within the pottery research and the dissemination process of excavation results is thus a  good opportunity to discuss and develop future standards. With the divers pottery  repertoire in Jerash Jordan at hand the project will be able to feed in to and benefit from  structured linked data sets using a set of global standards.

Linked Samian Ware: challenges of a LOD approach to samian ware

Submitted by Florian Thiery

Research in samian ware advanced considerably in recent years based on a dataset collected by several scholars in the past decades [1]. It comprises detailed and reviewed data of potters, pots and related places in the northern provinces of the Roman Empire. The spatial distribution and chronological pattern as well as the identification of kiln sites of individual potters are key research questions. Based on this data, for instance Mees proposed a reconstruction and analysis of pottery trade networks considering archaeological material [2]. The nature of the data makes it reasonable to approach the questions utilizing the concept of Linked Open Data (LOD) to generate interoperability and potential for data dissemination.

The goal of the study presented in this presentation is to migrate a subset of these data into a LOD structure and to make it accessible through URIs in a REST interface as well as via a SPARQL endpoint. The subjective semantic relations between potters, pots and places should be visualised in the manner of linking. Furthermore the resources should be linked to existing LOD projects, for instance to Pleiades [3] for places, using the Semantic Web to get additional information for the own resource.

Potter, pots and places and their attributes could be conceptually modelled using the CIDOC-CRM [4]. However, in the study direct linking of individual objects to mature ontologies widely used in the Semantic Web was preferred, to avoid CIDOC-CRM modelling questions. This presentation shows different modelling concepts and its challenges for each resource type using (1) an own ontology, (2) existing ontologies in the web, (3) the approach of Kerameikos [5] as well as (4) labels of the Labeling System [6]. The semantic links between potters, pots and places could be build via an own fixed predicate ontology or using ontologies like SKOS [7] or Open Annotation [8] to generate loose coupled relations.

The idea of LOD is to couple related resources to build up an interlinked web of data. In the context of the study it was investigated what kind of suitable web resources are available from which the samian ware resources could benefit. On the one hand, web accessible repositories for fragments and potters are missing.

On the other hand, Pleiades provides a large number of places to support geographical annotations of textural sources or archaeological objects. These places are used by the Pelagios project [9] that links data from more than 20 partners to get additional information to an abstract Pleiades place concept. In this study, find-spots and kiln sites are mapped to Pleiades places to get additional data from the Pelagios partners. The locations in the samian dataset are reviewed and show much higher precision than the Pleiades places, so this mapping challenge have to be solved, too.

The results yield that research on samian ware can benefit from implementing the concept of LOD. Enhanced perspectives arise when extending the linked data to other resources like dies and coins. When the data is published it could contribute to cross-linking of archaeological information internationally. A major challenge is finding the correct modelling concept for each resource type, as well as the semantic links between each other and to relying resources in the Semantic Web. Using technologies like the Labeling System, CIDOC-CRM, SKOS and Open Annotation can help to overcome this bottleneck.

The presentation presents the results of a M.Sc. thesis delivered at the Hochschule Mainz - University of Applied Sciences in cooperation with the Römisch Germanisches Zentralmuseum Mainz (RGZM) and the Institute for Spatial Information and Surveying Technology (i3mainz) [10].

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References

1. http://www.rgzm.de/samian
2. Mees, A. (2011): Die Verbreitung von Terra Sigillata aus den Manufakturen von Arezzo, Pisa, Lyon, und La Graufesenque: Die Transformation der italischen Sigillata-Herstellung in Gallien 1. Auflage, Verlag des Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums, 2011.
3. http://pleiades.stoa.org
4. http://cidoc-crm.org
5. http://kerameikos.org
6. http://i3mainz.hs-mainz.de/en/projekte/labelingsystem
7. http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/REC-skos-reference-20090818
8. http://www.openannotation.org/spec/core
9. http://pelagios-project.blogspot.de
10. http://www.hs-mainz.de – http://rgzm.de – http://i3mainz.hs-mainz.de

CAA Siena Roundtable Update

Since it is not possible to submit an abstract through the CAA conference paper submission system for the Linked Open Data Applied to Pottery Databases roundtable, as it was last year with the numismatic roundtable in Paris, one can email the abstract to Tyler Jo Smith or me directly. Additionally, in order to promote the proposals and discussion topics, I can give access to participants to post their ideas and abstracts here on the Kerameikos blog.

Even if you do not plan to make a short, 10-15 minute informal presentation during the roundtable, you may still post the topics you'd like to discuss, your interests in pottery and/or databases, or what information you'd like to come away with. This format is similar to THATCamp. For the roundtable to be optimally beneficial, the participants should have an influence on the conversation. After all, the roundtable isn't just about the Kerameikos project.

CAA 2015 Roundtable: Linked Data for Pottery

The Kerameikos.org steering committee has submitted the following roundtable proposal for CAA 2015, to be held in Siena, Italy between March 30 and April 3. The roundtable was recently accepted. Please see the call for papers. Below is the abstract:

Linked Open Data Applied to Pottery Databases

The indestructible nature of pottery has left an abundant amount of material in the archaeological record. Vessels were formed into a variety of shapes and sizes which inform the modern scholar about their possible function and/or manufacturing process. In addition to being an excellent tool for dating, pottery also enables researchers to reconstruct the nature of a site and/or point to evidence of trade between groups of people. Some types of pottery even exhibit additional decoration that reflects the style of a certain period, the visual language of a region, or scenes that offer information about religion, daily life, literature, or contemporary events.

Ceramics exist in a variety of databases within museum collections, archives, or as part of excavations or surveys. The basic ideas underlying the classification of ancient Mediterranean pottery (e.g., shape, production place, painter, potter, iconography, etc.) are shared across languages, but the aggregation of data on a massive scale cannot be undertaken without standardised identifiers and ontologies. Presently, there are no firm standards for representing and/or publishing pottery datasets on the web, and, for this reason, it is difficult to query across multiple collections for research purposes. Linked Open Data (LOD) can play a vital role in ameliorating some of these technical challenges. Building on the methodologies developed for Nomisma.org, a collaborative enterprise that seeks to define the intellectual concepts of numismatics, we have undertaken a new project, Kerameikos.org, that likewise will apply these technologies to pottery. Kerameikos.org, a thesaurus that seeks to define pottery concepts with URIs and RDF, will enable those publishing ceramic data to encode their information in an accessible manner, following emerging web standards in the cultural heritage community.

This roundtable follows the introduction of Kerameikos.org during the 2014 CAA (Gruber and Smith). Since that time we have selected a Scientific Committee comprised of experts relevant to the current project content, including information technologists and pottery specialists. Currently, we seek to solicit feedback from the informatics and ceramics communities on our future direction. While Kerameikos.org is focused currently on Greek black- and red-figure ‘vases’, we welcome presentations and discussions of digital projects in other fields of pottery studies. It is our goal to design a tool whose application can meet the needs of archaeologists working in museums, the field, or archives. We hope that this roundtable will encourage further dialogue and collaboration.

Ethan Gruber, American Numismatic Society
Renee Gondek, George Washington University
Tyler Jo Smith, University of Virginia