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TACOS: 21st Century Geospatial #HistEnv Data Management

GSTAR, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Archaeogeomancy: Digital Heritage Specialists – archaeological geomatics – the majick of spatial data in archaeology – archaeological information systems for the digital age:

TACOS – the event

On 14 May 2014 the Council for British Archaeology (CBA) hosted a one day seminar on behalf of FISH and HEIRNET at the University of York to discuss common issues facing the historic environment information sector and make progress towards a shared vision and agenda for historic environment information management.

The TACOS keynotes, discussions and demonstrations will build upon a ‘show and tell’ event (the NACHOS seminar) held at the British Museum in November 2012, which identified the need for integration of information sources in support of the National Heritage Protection Plan (NHPP). The seminar will investigate current historic environment information management practices and identify areas for improvement through cross-sector collaboration.

Aims

5 Taco plate by ulterior epicure

Tacos

The key aims of the seminar were to:

  • Encourage discussion between different groups that produce and manage historic environment information from across the sector (professional, research and voluntary to identify common goals and issues
  • Develop information sharing networks and working partnerships across the sector to pool resources in the areas of skills development and application of information technology

There’s more info on the event (aims, topics, etc) here.

Programme

The full programme for the day is here. The day was filled with really interesting talks on a range of topics focussing on three overarching themes:

  • Use of information and reuse of data (e.g. ‘Big Data’ projects reusing historic environment information/datasets, the role of information standards, the integration of different types of historic environment information built heritage information
  • Skills development (e.g. skill gaps in professional practice, university provision)
  • Use of new information systems and technology (e.g. access to information and technology, how skills development and training is accessed – potential barriers)

Watch Again

The whole event was recorded and published to YouTube by Doug Rocks-Macqueen. The playlist below includes all the videos from the day and the official Storify of the event is also embedded below.

Geosemantic Technologies

This section is a write up of my talk from the recent TACOS event which formed part of Session 3: Information Systems & Technology. The session was chaired by Keith May (English Heritage) and started with an excellent presentation by Ceri Binding (University of South Wales, Hypermedia Research Unit), an overview of the work he has been undertaking working with heritage vocabularies and Linked Data. The outputs of the Seneschal project have already had an impact in their short existence. Rather helpfully for me, Ceri covered all the basics of Linked Data, RDF and introduced schemas such as SKOS.

Video

Slides

My slides are available on Slideshare as usual:

Storify

I’ve written up the salient points of the event as pertaining to geosemantic tools, geospatial data and Linked Data.


http://storify.com/pauljcripps/tacos-2014

The official Storify:

 



The post TACOS: 21st Century Geospatial #HistEnv Data Management appeared first on Archaeogeomancy: Digital Heritage Specialists.

Related posts:

  1. Towards a Collaborative Strategy for sector information management (TACOS)
  2. GSTAR: investigation of methods for working with geosemantic data, integrating geospatial data with semantic data
  3. Linking Geospatial Data 2014

Colonisation of Britain

GSTAR, , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Archaeogeomancy: Digital Heritage Specialists – archaeological geomatics – the majick of spatial data in archaeology – archaeological information systems for the digital age:

Colonisation of Britain Linked Data

Colonisation of Britain Linked Data

The Colonisation of Britain project was undertaken by Wessex Archaeology, commissioned by English Heritage, and involved the digitisation of the archive material of Roger Jacobi.

The project aimed to provide a comprehensive survey of the Upper Palaeolithic resource, with a pilot study of the Mesolithic in England involving three counties. A comprehensive survey of these periods (c.38,000-c 6500 BP) was considered of particular importance because many of the sites and find spots represent evidence for the recolonisation of Britain after the Last Glacial Maximum by hominid groups. Unlike earlier recolonisations this event is part of the most northerly early migration of social groups of anatomically modern humans.

The major primary source of data for the survey is the invaluable and extensive archive compiled over many years by the late Dr Roger Jacobi. Securing this archive was identified as a priority in itself. The project included the digitisation of the Jacobi Archive, both as an image dataset and as a structured relational database, enhanced with additional information from SMR/HERs.

One of the outputs from the project is a Linked Data version of the outputs and Archaeogeomancy were pleased to be commissioned to undertake this component.

Method

The work was undertaken using the Stellar toolkit, produced by the Hypermedia Research Unit at the University of South Wales. This is a freely available toolkit which facilitates the creation of Linked Data resources from tabular data, either in the form of delimited text files or relational databases. The source material used was the outputs available from Wessex Archaeology and soon to be available from the Archaeology Data Service, where the Linked Data will also soon be available.

The method for working with the data using the Stellar toolkit involves two main processes. Firstly, the data is mapped to one or both of the ontologies supported by the toolkit, namely the CRM-EH (for archaeological fieldwork data) which is an extension to the other ontology supported, namely the CIDOC CRM which supports the full range of cultural heritage information. For the Colonisation of Britain project, a mapping was undertaken the the main CIDOC CRM ontology as the data does not relate to archaeological investigations, rather describes collections of objects from the Jacobi archive.

The second stage is to create templates representing this mapping for use with the Stellar application. This uses the templates and the source data to produce CIDOC CRM compliant Linked Data in the form of RDF files. The format of the templates is defined by the String Template system, “a java template engine (with ports for C#, Python) for generating source code, web pages, emails, or any other formatted text output“. The user defined templates created for this project reference the core Stellar templates written by Ceri Binding (University of South Wales) which do most of the heavy lifting.

A further stage was also undertaken to align geospatial elements of the source data with Ordnance Survey data. Where placenames occurred in the source data, these were converted to Ordnance Survey OpenSpace URIs using the Open Refine platform drawing on the OS Reconciliation API (see below for details). This included parish and county names which were linked to the OS BoundaryLine dataset. A further piece of work will be undertaken which will take this one step further and add GeoSPARQL nodes to the Linked Data resource, enabling the data to be more fully included in Linked Geospatial Data graphs.

Mapping

This mapping describes the data as it is stored in the digitised version of the Jacobi archive; this means that some concepts are not fully resolved, for example places of origin, as it cannot be stated with certainty that any two identical place names refer to the same place. It is of course, still possible to query the semantic data using the longer chains so for example with respect to place names, whilst two occurrences of the same place name are represented in the output Linked Data as two distinct places, they can be linked by virtue of having the same place name appellation.

The heart of the Linked Data resource is each collection of artefacts described by the original card index. This is modelled as the CIDOC CRM concept E78 Collection. Each artefact collection is described by an index card (E31 Document) which documents the collection itself as well as the ‘site’ ie the place of origin (E53 Place). Where specific spatial coordinates exist, these have been included as appellations of the spatial nodes (E47 Spatial Coordinates). Spatial metadata such as precision is represented as classifications of the spatial nodes (using E54 Dimensions, E58 Measurement Units and E55 Type).

The artefact collection can form part of a larger collection, for example a named collection (E78 Collection) curated by a museum (E40 Legal Body), and is classified using the classificatory schemes used by both Jacobi and Wessex Archaeology through their enhancement (all using E55 Type). Additional information is stored as notes associated with particular concepts as appropriate. The index cards describe collections by material type so the resultant Linked Data does likewise, with each collection having a type of material (E57 Material).

Finally, assertions made through the project by the specialists were the product of a specific activity (E13 Attribute Assignment). This allows each collection to be associated with an archaeological period (eg Mesolithic) represented here as a purely temporal concept (E49 Time Appellation) and this linkage can be extended as required to link to eg the Heritage Data period resources, represented using SKOS.

Open Refine

The Open Refine platform is a very useful way of converting spatial data stored as text strings (eg names of counties, parishes, etc) into URIs suitable for inclusion in Linked Data resources. For details on how to use this, see the official Ordnance Survey documentation and also this very helpful blog by John Goodwin.

Visualisation

The Linked Data data can be visualised in a variety of ways. The image presented here have been created using Gruff to be demonstrative of the shape of the Linked Data. The image shown here illustrates the overall shape of the resource using one specific record; the collection, associated places, classifications, curatorial organisations and the project itself can all be seen. Also noteworthy are the nodes in the bottom right of the image which relate to the Ordnance Survey TOIDs referenced in this case.

Example showing the Linked Data for record 00748

Example showing the Linked Data for record 00748 (click for a larger view)

Templates

The Stellar templates used for the project are included here for information. They are dependent on the CRM-EH and CRM templates distributed with the Stellar Toolkit. Templates are distributed using a Creative Commons license so do make use of them for any purpose, the only restriction on usage is that proper attribution be made.

For more information on writing custom templates, see the Stellar Tools documentation, the String Template documentation or get in touch.

Acknowledgements

Thanks are due to Chris Brayne and Matt Leivers (Wessex Archaeology) for commissioning the project and doing all the really hard work successfully undertaking the main Colonisation of Britain project. A big thanks to Ceri Binding (University of South Wales) for support on the Stellar Toolkit and thanks also to Michael Charno (Archaeology Data Service) for liaising over ADS handover and specific requirements.

The post Colonisation of Britain appeared first on Archaeogeomancy: Digital Heritage Specialists.

Related posts:

  1. So long and thanks for all the fish… Hello G-STAR!
  2. GSTAR: investigation of methods for working with geosemantic data, integrating geospatial data with semantic data
  3. GSTAR @ CAA2014

CAA2014: Ontologies and standards for improving interoperability of archaeological data: from models towards practical experiences in various contexts

GSTAR, , , , , , ,

Archaeogeomancy: Digital Heritage Specialists – archaeological geomatics – the majick of spatial data in archaeology – archaeological information systems for the digital age:

CAA2014 banner

CAA2014 banner

Overview:

The session was organised by Anne-Violaine Szabados, Katell Briatte, Maria Emilia Masci, and Christophe Tufféry. Reinhard Foertsch and Sebastian Rahtz chaired the session.

There were a number of highlights. The number of papers referencing the CIDOC CRM demonstrates the impact and uptake of this robust ontology within the cultural heritage sector. With increased uptake and demonstrable use cases, this can only snowball and bring the benefits so many people have discussed over the past ten years and more. Dominic Oldman and Sebastian Rahtz’s paper in particular set the scene here, talking about experiences with the CLAROS and ResearchSpace projects.

Discussion of the PeriodO project was particularly striking. The approach to taken to provide a Linked Data resource of period assertions is a very neat solution to the problem of diverse views of archaeological periods and the inclusion of a spatial component promises to make for an incredibly powerful resource. I look forward to making use of this in my research.

There was significant diversity in the subject matters of presentations, ranging from 3D models to coins to archaeological deposits, features, sites and monuments. It was particularly pleasing to note there is now a significant group of researchers working with ontologies, providing an active community for ideas to be discussed within and ideas mooted and developed. It is a privilege to be a part of this. With groups such as the ARIADNE Linked Data SIG and the CAA Semantic SIG, there are also forums within which we can collaborate and communicate.

Programme:

  1. › The Digital Archaeological Workflow: A Case Study from Sweden  – Marcus Smith, Swedish National Heritage Board 08:55-09:20 (25min)
  2. › Find the balance – Modelling aspects in Archaeological Information Systems  – Frank Schwarzbach, Dresden University of Applied Sciences 09:20-09:45 (25min)
  3. › linkedARC.net: addressing the standards question in archaeological digital data management using Linked Open Data  – Frank Lynam, Trinity College Dublin 09:45-10:10 (25min)
  4. › Dykes of standards supporting polders of data: the practices used in the Netherlands for making archaeological data available and accessible  – Valentijn Gilissen, Data Archiving and Networked Services 10:10-10:35 (25min)
  5. › Integration of Archaeological Datasets Through the Gradual Refinement of Models  – Cesar Gonzalez-Perez, Institute of Heritage Sciences, Spanish National Research Council 10:50-11:15 (25min)
  6. › Building comprehensive management systems for cultural – historical information  – Chryssoula Bekiari, Institute of Computer Science, Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas 11:15-11:40 (25min)
  7. › To Boldly or Bravely Go? Experiences of using Semantic Technologies for Archaeological Resources  – Keith May, English Heritage (& University of South Wales) 11:40-12:05 (25min)
  8. › Aligning the Academy with the Cultural Heritage Sector through the CIDOC CRM and Semantic Web technology.  – Dominic Oldman, British Museum – Sebastian Rahtz, IT Services, University of Oxford 12:05-12:30 (25min)
  9. › Making the links to Portable Antiquities Scheme data  – Daniel Pett, The British Museum, Portable Antiquities Scheme 14:00-14:25 (25min)
  10. › The interoperability of the ArSol database (Soil Archives): reflections and feedbacks experiences on the use of the CIDOC-CRM ontology and the integration of thesauri  – Emeline Le Goff, UMR 7324 CITERES – Olivier Marlet, UMR7324 CITERES 14:25-14:50 (25min)
  11. › Geosemantic Tools for Archaeological Research (GSTAR)  – Paul Cripps, Archaeogeomancy, Hypermedia Research Unit, University of South Wales 14:50-15:15 (25min)
  12. › Linked Open Pottery  – Ethan Gruber, American Numismatic Society – Tyler Jo Smith, University of Virginia 15:15-15:40 (25min)
  13. › Uncertainty handling for ancient coinage  – Karsten Tolle, Databases and Information Systems 15:40-16:05 (25min)
  14. › Some Issues on LOD in Cultural Heritage: the Case of Historical Place Names  – Oreste Signore, CNR-ISTI 16:20-16:45 (25min)
  15. › Periods, Organized (PeriodO): a Linked Data gazetteer to bridge the gap between concept and usage in archaeological periodization  – Adam Rabinowitz, The University of Texas at Austin 16:45-17:10 (25min)
  16. › A metadata schema for cultural heritage documentation data retrieval through publication- Using STARC metadata schema to handle 3D Cultural Heritage Documentation (The case of recording sites in Israel)  – Yiakoupi Kyriaki, The Cyprus Institute 17:10-17:35 (25min)
  17. › An Ontology for 3D Visualization in Cultural Heritage  – Valeria Vitale, King’s College London, Department of Digital Humanities 17:35-18:00 (25min)
  18. › Poster Session & Conclusion  – Anne-Violaine Szabados, UMR 7041, LIMC – Katell Briatte, DGP – DSIP – Maria Emilia Masci, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa – Christophe Tufféry, Institut National de Recherches Archéologiques Préventives, Cités, Territoires, Environnement et Sociétés 18:00-18:20 (20min)

 

The post CAA2014: Ontologies and standards for improving interoperability of archaeological data: from models towards practical experiences in various contexts appeared first on Archaeogeomancy: Digital Heritage Specialists.

Related posts:

  1. GSTAR @ CAA2014
  2. Linked Data vocabularies for cultural heritage
  3. GSTAR: investigation of methods for working with geosemantic data, integrating geospatial data with semantic data

GSTAR @ CAA2014

GSTAR, , , , , , , , , , ,

Archaeogeomancy: Digital Heritage Specialists – archaeological geomatics – the majick of spatial data in archaeology – archaeological information systems for the digital age:

Eiffel Tower

Eiffel Tower

On Thursday 24th April, I gave a presentation on my PhD research project (GSTAR) to the 2014 Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology conference, Paris, France. The presentation formed part of the session S07 Ontologies and standards for improving interoperability of archaeological data: from models towards practical experiences in various contexts organised by Anne-Violaine Szabados, Katell Briatte, Maria Emilia Masci, and Christophe Tufféry. Reinhard Foertsch and Sebastian Rahtz chaired the session.

Some notes on the session can be found here.

Eiffel Tower

Eiffel Tower

The abstract describes the talk, which covered work to date in the first year of the project:

Much work has been undertaken over the past decade relating to the application of semantic approaches to archaeological data resources, notably by English Heritage and the University of South Wales. These two organisations, over the course of a number of projects, developed an archaeological extension to the CIDOC CRM ontology through the Ontological Modelling Project (Cripps & May, 2010), then applied this to a number of archaeological resources through the subsequent STAR project (May, Binding and Tudhope, 2011), implementing tools to facilitate integration of other resources through the STELLAR project (May, Binding, Tudhope, & Jeffrey, 2012), and now, in partnership with the Bespoke HER User Group, RCAHMS, RCAHMW and Wessex Archaeology, are implementing SKOS based vocabularies and associated tools to enable the augmentation of these semantic resources through the SENESCHAL project.

From the outset, it was observed that the spatial component of archaeological data would be a key element, archaeological data being inherently spatial in nature. To date, most current applications of spatial semantics in the heritage sector have focussed on place names and named locations for sites and monuments and object provenances. The GSTAR project aims to extend semantic approaches to archaeological data fully into the geospatial domain and is instead focussing on the detailed spatial data emerging from archaeological excavation and survey work and is investigating approaches for the creation, use, management and dissemination of such spatial data within a geosemantic framework, building on the CIDOC CRM, with particular reference to sharing and integration of disparate resources.

This paper will present work to date in the first year of the GSTAR project. This has been centred on the identification of suitable platforms and methods for the integration of semantic and geospatial data including comparisons of different approaches emerging from the Semantic Web and Geospatial research communities. Testing and prototyping has been accomplished using sample data from the Archaeology Data Service, making use of available geospatial and (geo)semantic tools, both FOSS and commercial.

Cripps, P. and K. May 2010. To OO or not to OO? Revelations from Ontological Modelling of an Archaeological Information System, in: Nicolucci, F. and S. Hermon (eds.), Beyond the Artifact. Digital Interpretation of the Past. Proceedings of CAA2004, Prato 13–17 April 2004. Archaeolingua, Budapest, pp. 59-63.

May, K., C. Binding and D. Tudhope 2011. A STAR is Born: Some Emerging Semantic Technologies for Archaeological Resources, in: Jerem, E., F. Redő and V. Szeverényi (eds.), On the Road to Reconstructing the Past. Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA). Proceedings of the 36th International Conference. Budapest, April 2-6, 2008. Archeaeolingua, Budapest, pp. 111-116 (CD-ROM 402-408).

May, K., C. Binding, D. Tudhope and S. Jeffrey 2012. Semantic Technologies Enhancing Links and Linked Data for Archaeological Resources, in: Zhou, M., I. Romanowska, Z. Wu, P. Xu and P. Verhagen (eds.), Revive the Past. Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA). Proceedings of the 39th International Conference, Beijing, April 12-16.. Pallas Publications, Amsterdam, pp. 261-272.

The presentation is available on Slideshare:

The presentation also prompted some positive comments on Twitter, which was lovely:

The post GSTAR @ CAA2014 appeared first on Archaeogeomancy: Digital Heritage Specialists.

Related posts:

  1. GSTAR: investigation of methods for working with geosemantic data, integrating geospatial data with semantic data
  2. CAA2014: Ontologies and standards for improving interoperability of archaeological data: from models towards practical experiences in various contexts
  3. So long and thanks for all the fish… Hello G-STAR!

Towards a Collaborative Strategy for sector information management (TACOS)

GSTAR, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Archaeogeomancy: Digital Heritage Specialists – archaeological geomatics – the majick of spatial data in archaeology – archaeological information systems for the digital age:

5 Taco plate by ulterior epicure

Tacos

I’ll be talking about geospatial topics relating to historic environment information management at this seminar on 14th May.  Another classic title for the event, following up on the successful NACHOS seminar. Watch this space for details of the forthcoming Burritos workshop…

More seriously, the event is described as:

On 14 May 2014 the Council for British Archaeology (CBA) is hosting a one day seminar on behalf of FISH and HEIRNET at the University of York to discuss common issues facing the historic environment information sector and make progress towards a shared vision and agenda for historic environment information management.

The key aims of the seminar are to:

  • Encourage discussion between different groups that produce and manage historic environment information from across the sector (professional, research and voluntary to identify common goals and issues
  • Develop information sharing networks and working partnerships across the sector to pool resources in the areas of skills development and application of information technology

Topics:
The TACOS keynotes, discussions and demonstrations will build upon a ‘show and tell’ event (the NACHOS seminar) held at the British Museum in November 2012, which identified the need for integration of information sources in support of the National Heritage Protection Plan (NHPP). The seminar will investigate current historic environment information management practices and identify areas for improvement through cross-sector collaboration through three overarching themes of:

  • Use of information and reuse of data (e.g. ‘Big Data’ projects reusing historic environment information/datasets, the role of information standards, the integration of different types of historic environment information built heritage information
  • Skills development (e.g. skill gaps in professional practice, university provision)
  • Use of new information systems and technology (e.g. access to information and technology, how skills development and training is accessed – potential barriers)

I’ll be talking about my research and some of the opportunities now available for making better use of digital heritage information, particularly geospatial data. Hopefully this will complement the talks by Pater McKeague (RCAHMS), Ceri Binding (University of South Wales) and Dan Pett (PAS) in particular but will also touch on skills issues being discussed by Kenny Aitchison (Landward Research), Julian Richards (University of York) and Ed Lee (EH). It’s only a fifteen minute talk so I will try to focus on direction, overview and a bit of blue skies thinking; there’s more detail on many of these topics in my various publications.

The talks will be videod and streamed (where possible) and there will be social media channels too, so do keep an eye out on twitter. My slides will also be on my slideshare after the event.

Further details including the programme for the day can be found here and at the seminar website.

The post Towards a Collaborative Strategy for sector information management (TACOS) appeared first on Archaeogeomancy: Digital Heritage Specialists.

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