D4.4 – Final report on ontology implementation
Creators: name: Richards, Julian
name: Felicetti, Achille
name: Meghini, Carlo
name: Theodoridou, Maria
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2022
Subjects: CIDOC CRM

description: This deliverable describes the activities carried out during the four years of the ARIADNEplus project on the implementation of the ARIADNEplus Ontology within Task 4.4 of Work Package 4 (WP4). Other Tasks of WP4, including the operation of the help desk, the procedure for mapping datasets to the data model and supporting the 3M mapping tool, and the integration of digital libraries were reported in Deliverable D4.3. Related work has taken place under WP2 (Extending and Supporting the ARIADNE community), WP5 (Extending the ARIADNEplus data infrastructure), WP12 (data integration and interoperability), and WP14 (The ARIADNEplus knowledge management system), and these provide the focus of other deliverables (D2.5, D5.4, D12.5, and D14.2). The overall objective of WP4 was to Integrate the datasets of the Archaeological Research Communities, and Task 4.4 was focussed on Implementing the ARIADNE ontology - the AO-Cat - and the ontology extensions, known as application profiles, to specific sub-domains of archaeology and archaeological science. The work was organised in subtasks by domain. In this report we finalise the presentation of the AO-Cat in Section 3. The outcome of progress on each of the fourteen potential application profiles is reported in Section 4. In Deliverable D4.2 we presented three case studies in detail (for Heritage Science, Bio-Archaeology and Ancient DNA, and Inscriptions). In Section 5 of this deliverable we present one further case study for Fieldwork activities, an extensive investigation of how the ARIADNE Ontology can be used to model particularly complex and articulated scenarios of archaeological investigations and activities. The results achieved by Task 4.4 (in collaboration with WP14) have gone far beyond the expectations framed at the beginning of the project. Indeed, the development process of the application profiles and their systematisation as part of the general ARIADNE ontological framework have not only allowed the efficient and complete representation of the entire ARIADNE information ecosystem, but have also greatly contributed to the advancement of research in the field of the development of ontologies and conceptual models for cultural heritage. Of particular note was the development of the AO-Cat, a completely new standard that allowed us to construct the ARIADNE Catalogue in an effective and straightforward way, and to achieve an outstanding level of integration of over three million archaeological resources encompassing all sub-domains. The AO-Cat has proved to be perfectly adequate and sufficient for modelling data on palaeo-anthropology (subtask 4.4.1), maritime and underwater archaeology (subtask 4.4.11) and for most of the information in the domains of environmental archaeology (subtask 4.4.3) and public archaeological finds (subtask 4.4.7), in which the extensive use of controlled vocabularies to assign specific concepts to each of the defined instances has also allowed to reach a particularly extensive level of integration. The fact that a slightly modified version of the AO-Cat is now proving itself fit for purpose for data aggregation of maritime heritage data drawn from all of the constituent nations of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland demonstrates its applicability to projects beyond ARIADNE. The AO-Cat has also proved to be efficient in combination with the extensions of the CIDOC CRM ecosystem used for field survey information (subtask 4.4.6 in combination with CRMarchaeo), standing structures (subtask 4.4.9, in interaction with CRMba) and inscriptions (subtask 4.4.13 together with CRMtex). In some cases it was sufficient to combine AO-Cat with a specialised service, such as that of spatio-temporal ARIADNEplus D4.4 (Public) 6 data (subtask 4.4.10) set up for interoperability of geographical information, to achieve optimal integration without any need to define additional dedicated conceptual tools. Among the new models, in addition to the AO-Cat, the development of the application profile for scientific data (CRMhs, for subtasks 4.4.4 and 4.4.5) and for bio-archaeology and ancient DNA (subtask 4.4.2) was also of considerable interest. These are two entirely new models, harmonised with each other, and devoted to the study of the specific problems of heritage science. The classes and properties introduced by these models have also proved to be of great use in other subdomains. In fact, one of the most interesting strategies adopted in the development phase was the reuse of models previously defined in ARIADNEplus, (CRMhs and aDNA in particular) for the definition of subsequent application profiles, such as those for remote sensing (subtask 4.4.8) and burials (4.4.14). In this case, the conceptual foundations and the logic with which the reused entities had previously been defined in the original ontologies have also been taken up and adapted to the rationales of the new models. A very sophisticated case was that of fieldwork activity (task 4.4.12), where the complexity of the domain and of the multiple events and activities that it involves required the deployment of most of the ARIADNE Ontology models alongside CRMarchaeo for the development of the application profile. The definition of such an assorted and well-orchestrated set of ontological models is an extraordinary achievement for a project like ARIADNEplus which has put integration and interoperability at the heart of its research programme. Beyond their immediate usefulness for the construction of the ARIADNE semantic data space, the importance of this development work lies in the ability to conceptually model the infinite facets of a complex domain such as that of archaeology. The application profiles are innovative tools, ready to be used in external contexts, as an effective standard for the information of other research domains. The ARIADNE Ontology is squarely placed in the family of CIDOC CRM ontologies, which it enriches and with which it forms a synergistic system for modelling any type of information produced by the domains of Cultural Heritage and Heritage Science. <br>
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