=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-1656/paper3
|storemode=property
|title=Integrating Terminological Tools and Semantic Archaeological Information: the ICCD RA Schema and Thesaurus
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1656/paper3.pdf
|volume=Vol-1656
|authors=Achille Felicetti,Ilenia Galluccio,Cinzia Luddi,Maria Letizia Mancinelli,Tiziana Scarselli,Antonio Davide Madonna
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/ercimdl/FelicettiGLMSM15
}}
==Integrating Terminological Tools and Semantic Archaeological Information: the ICCD RA Schema and Thesaurus==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1656/paper3.pdf
Integrating Terminological Tools and Semantic
Archaeological Information: the ICCD RA
Schema and Thesaurus
Achille Felicetti1 , Ilenia Galluccio1 , Cinzia Luddi1 , Maria Letizia Mancinelli2 ,
Tiziana Scarselli3 , and Antonio Davide Madonna3
1
PIN, VAST-LAB, Prato, Italy
2
MiBACT-ICCD, Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo e la Documentazione, Rome, Italy
3
MiBACT-ICCU, Istituto Centrale per il Catalogo Unico, Rome, Italy
{achille.felicetti,ilenia.galluccio,cinzia.luddi}@pin.unifi.it
{marialetizia.mancinelli,tiziana.scarselli,
antoniodavide.madonna}@beniculturali.it
Abstract. This paper describes the process of mapping, translation and
publication in SKOS format of the RA Thesaurus, a terminological tool
developed by the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage (MiBACT) as a
part of the official documentation used for the recording of archaeologi-
cal finds. In particular, the RA Thesaurus is intended to provide unified
and meaningful terminology for the description of archaeological objects
according to the MiBACT official cataloguing standards. After describ-
ing the thesaurus, the logic with which it was developed and its internal
structure, we report the various phases of the conversion, both from a
theoretical and implementation point of view, and the various technolo-
gies used for the publication of the thesaurus on the web. This work is
a collaborative effort between PIN and MiBACT carried out under the
ARIADNE project.
Keywords: Archaeology, Mapping, Thesauri, ICCD, CIDOC CRM, SKOS
1 Introduction
ARIADNE is a European project focusing on integration of existing archaeolog-
ical research data infrastructures to enable the use of distributed datasets and
services by means of new and powerful technologies as an integral component
of the archaeological research methodology. Among other activities, ARIADNE
is also actively working on building a coordinated system of multilingual ter-
minology tools able to meet the many needs of the international community of
archaeologists. As part of these integration activities, the valuable work of map-
ping national catalogue schemas on international standards is a critical step;
at the same time integration of terminology resources is necessary to overcome
linguistic barriers that frequently slow down the integration processes. We have
extensively described the process of CIDOC CRM encoding of the RA Schema,
Felicetti et al.
released by ICCD for documenting archaeological artefacts in Italian archaeol-
ogy, in a previous work [1]. The mapping was presented as work in progress at
that time. Since then, new extensions of the CIDOC CRM (and in particular
CRMarchaeo) have been released which are now able to provide more possibil-
ities for the enrichment of the semantic archaeological information and a more
archaeological oriented means of documentation. The release of new versions and
the creation of new extensions of the CIDOC CRM gave us the opportunity to
investigate how the mapping could be improved. This allowed us to bring the
mapping to a stage very close to completion, although much work still remains to
be done. The RA Schema is closely linked to the RA Thesaurus, a sophisticated
vocabulary providing all the necessary terminological facilities for an efficient
and well-structured recording of the objects coming from archaeological excava-
tions. The vocabulary has been implemented by ICCD to support the encoding
of two specific fields (OGTD - CLS). These two fields describe the definition
of the object and its class and production. This paper will focus and propose
integration between the RA Schema and its thesaurus, based on W3C recom-
mendations and using numerous tools developed and used by several partners in
the ARIADNE project.
2 ICCD and the Standards for Cultural Heritage
ICCD is the Italian Central Institute for Catalogue and Documentation, one of
the seven Central Institutes of the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage whose
main goal is to create a centralized national catalogue of Italian cultural her-
itage. The activity of the Institute is based on the research and development
of tools, methods and standards for knowledge, protection and enhancement of
the cultural and artistic heritage in Italy. It mainly provides the management of
the national general catalogue of archaeological, architectural, historical, artistic
and ethno-anthropological heritage, the development of cataloguing methodolo-
gies and standards, and the coordination of the technical institutions involved
in the cataloguing activities on the national territory. ICCD also provides tools
and best practices for implementing these standards with the clear intent of
unifying and streamlining processes related with the cataloguing activities, to
guarantee quality and to implement standardisation and interoperability at a
national level.
To ensure that this happens efficiently, the Institute creates and releases a
series of organic resources and recommendations to support the standardization
process in all its aspects. These include detailed regulations describing the vari-
ous tools and the way they should be used, a set of schemas and forms to collect
information in a structured way according to the different asset types, authority
files to guarantee homogeneity for the common transversal key concepts and en-
tities, thesauri and terminological tools to provide uniform layers of information
and a common language. Among the latter category, one of the most important
tools released by ICCD is the RA Thesaurus, a tool providing standard names
for the definition of archaeological artefacts described using the RA schema,
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Integrating Terminological Tools and Semantic Archaeological Information
the ICCD standard schema used for the recording of movable objects. The RA
Schema is the most used and well established standard for Italian archaeology
so far. For this reason, ICCD has invested a lot of effort in the definition of
a terminological tool able to provide standardized and unambiguous names for
specific fields of the schema. The creation of the RA thesaurus is one of the best
results of this effort.
3 The ICCD RA - CIDOC CRM Mapping
In the previous work carried out together with ICCD, a detailed analysis of the
RA Schema was made to map the most significant model of ICCD archaeological
cataloguing system to CIDOC CRM. The RA Schema is used to record movable
objects. It is one of the most used for Italian archaeology because of the huge and
ever increasing amount of artefacts found during excavations. The RA Schema
contains a large number of descriptive information and “cross-sections” allowing
cross references with other ICCD resources. The RA Schema, together with the
RA Thesaurus, features one of the best tools of this kind in the international
panorama of cataloguing systems. The previous mapping work was carried out
on CIDOC CRM and took advantage of version 5 of the model, released in 2013.
However, in the last two years, a new version and numerous extensions of CIDOC
CRM have been released. Version 6 and the CRMarchaeo [2] and CRMsci [3]
extensions, much more suitable for the description of archaeological phenomena,
have strongly enhanced the representation and mapping of excavation entities.
CRMarchaeo, in particular, is being developed by the ARIADNE project to
facilitate the encoding of archaeological entities. Given this, we decided to update
the previous mapping in order to provide a stronger archaeology-oriented logic
to the various concepts and relationships that the RA Schema presents.
One of the most difficult problems to solve during the previous mapping
was the representation of the “finding” event, intended as the excavation activ-
ity during which objects are found. This event is of paramount importance in
archaeology because it is fundamental to trace the object’s provenance and to
reconstruct its history. Following the CIDOC-CRM model, we represented the
archaeological objects by using the E22 Man-Made Object class. However, to
describe their relationships with the two important activities of “survey” (cor-
responding to the “RE” field of the RA Schema) and “excavation” (specified
in the “DSC” field), CIDOC CRM core only provided a “change of ownership”
relationship that hardly fits here but we decided to use it anyway. Our previous
mapping appeared as shown in Figure 1.
Thanks to the release of the new extensions and a deep analysis of the cross-
section relating the RA Schema [4], the new mapping now shows a more ac-
curate rendering of these concepts. To express the “object found during an
excavation” relationship, CRMarchaeo provides the O19i was object found by
property, through which it is possible to link the artefact with the new S19 En-
counter Event class, expressly designed to render the concept of “finding” as
an event which occurred (P7 took place at) at a given Site (E7 ) identified by
30
Felicetti et al.
Fig. 1. ICCD-RA/CIDOC-CRM mapping
a given appellation (P57 is identified by - E44 Place Appellation), as shown in
Figure 2. This constitutes a more accurate representation of these concepts.
Fig. 2. ICCD-RA/CIDOC CRM/CRMarchaeo mapping
3.1 The ICCD RA Thesaurus
The RA Thesaurus was developed expressly to provide standardised values for
some of the “OG-OGGETTO” (Object) fields of the RA Schema. The content
of the thesaurus is organized in a tabular structure with five columns arranged
according to the hierarchical levels provided by the thesaurus. The first three
columns, used to fill the CLS field of the RA schema, present the categories’ three
levels of hierarchy, to which any concept can belong; column four lists the main
terms for the definition of the objects; column five provides specifications of the
main terms in accordance with morphological, functional or partitive criteria.
Both columns four and five are meant to provide standard terms for the OGTD
field of the RA Schema. Additional columns, reporting further attributes and
specifications for each term and subterm, such as descriptive notes and sample
images, are also present (see Fig. 3). Images are an added value of this tool for
their ability to visually show what words are not always able to say. We have
already investigated some of the possibilities to encode figures in our mapping,
but unfortunately the tools at our disposal do not always allow a clear definition
of these entities. For sure it will be important, in future versions of the thesaurus,
to define a standard mechanism for associating concepts with their images even
in the SKOS version of the thesaurus.
The RA Thesaurus differs from the other terminological tools created by
ICCD in the very sophisticated structuring criteria it follows, made more com-
plicated by the large amount of information deriving from Italian archaeology
and the huge number of classifications and nomenclatures it provides. In par-
ticular, the thesaurus is structured according to a multilevel schema based on
concept coordination, a typical KOS activity in which concepts are combined
with each other in order to produce meaningful “sentences” that define complex
31
Integrating Terminological Tools and Semantic Archaeological Information
Fig. 3. The ICCD RA Thesaurus model
concepts. Generally speaking, there can be two types of concept coordination:
pre-coordination and post-coordination. The key distinction between the two re-
lies on when the actual coordination occurs in relation to an information retrieval
event. Pre-coordination is decided and implemented before the information re-
trieval time, by a KOS maintainer or by an indexer who is using the KOS itself.
This occurs, for instance, when an indexer takes two existing concepts from a
concept scheme, such as “Coins” and “Mintage”, and explicitly combines them
with a given syntax, such as “Coins-Mintage”, to index a particular document.
Post-coordination, on the other hand, is performed as part of an information re-
trieval task, for instance through a SPARQL query able to retrieve all documents
indexed using both “Coins” and “Mintage” concepts [5]. The RA Thesaurus fol-
lows the post-coordination approach to create ad hoc concepts by using the
elements of a given schema. Each concept is in fact provided with all the nec-
essary subterms depending on it, which can belong to three specific semantic
areas according to the specification provided: either functional (i.e. relative to
the specific function of the object), partitive (i.e. relative to a specified part of
the object) or morphological (i.e. linked to the different forms that from time
to time an object may present). The structure of the thesaurus is obviously
functional to the specific cataloguing activities. Each concept is thus created on
the fly by combining the main terms with all the related subterms required to
render the specific name that a concept should show in a given context. Figure 4
provides an example of how the thesaurus is structured by reporting the various
facets of the term “cintura” (belt) and its related functional and morphological
subterms:
It is evident from the example above that the thesaurus itself does not offer a
closed and exhaustive list of all possible terms that can be used during the com-
pilation of the schema. Instead, it is a reference tool that, after a general term
is fixed, assists the user in proceeding to further specifications by the addition
of suitable subterms to gradually approximate the precise semantic meaning of
the object to be described.
The flexibility of this structure allows it to achieve a significant depth of seman-
tics, where required, and to build specific definitions of several types of objects,
32
Felicetti et al.
Fig. 4. Example of the thesaurus structure
including those in fragmentary conditions (for instance by means of the partitive
subconcepts).
This will overcome the necessity to define in advance the entire terminological
apparatus suitable to describe the infinite variety of situations the archaeologists
may face.
Just to remain with the example above, from a logical point of view, if an archae-
ologist finds a stud (borchia) pertaining to an ancient belt (cintura) intended
for the suspension of a sword or other similar weapons (per la sospensione delle
armi ).
A valid definition would be composed as follows:
Cintura (main term) +
per la sospensione delle armi (morphological aspect of the main term) +
borchia (part of the object that was found)
in order to have an entry like this:
Cintura per la sospensione delle armi, borchia (Belt for weapons suspension,
stud)
representing an exhaustive explanation of the fragmentary object itself and of
the bigger object which is part of, and also as a valid entry from the terminolog-
33
Integrating Terminological Tools and Semantic Archaeological Information
ical point of view following the formal recommendations provided by the ICCD
guidelines and validation systems.
3.2 A SKOS Mapping Proposal
SKOS is the standard chosen by the ARIADNE project for the encoding of all
terminological resources to be used in its integration plan, and for the undeni-
able advantages provided to integration and interoperability by its RDF-based
format. As one can easily understand from what was previously stated, the “com-
binatorial” nature of the RA Thesaurus, and especially of the sections intended
for the encoding of the OGTD field (column four and five), makes it very dif-
ficult to encode in a SKOS compatible format, which requires that a complete,
self-consistent and self-sufficient definition exists in the thesaurus for each item
or concept. The SKOS vocabulary itself does not provide any mechanism for
expressing that a given concept may consist of other pre-coordinated concepts.
It is, of course, possible to extend SKOS to establish a pattern for representing
coordinated concepts, for instance by stating a new sub property, as in the fol-
lowing example:
iccd:coordinationOf a rdf:Property;
rdfs:domain skos:Concept;
rdfs:range rdf:List.
and then use the new property this way:
iccd:coinsMintage a skos:Concept;
iccd:coordinationOf (iccd:coins iccd:mintage);
skos:prefLabel “Coins-Mintage”@en.
However, patterns for pre-coordination have not yet been exploited by the SKOS
community and solutions of this kind have not been explored fully enough to
warrant their inclusion in the official SKOS vocabulary. Analyzing the RA The-
saurus, PIN and ICCU identified a possible solution. We tried to follow a dif-
ferent approach, more “pre-coordination oriented” to rearrange, where possible,
the original content according to semantic criteria in order to define meaningful
self-consistent concepts in the SKOS representation. After discussing the matter
in depth, we proposed the following solutions:
1. The partitive specification subterms are in many cases independent terms
related with the main term mostly by a part-whole relationship. Thus, it is possi-
ble to describe this relationship by using the skos:narrowerPartitive property to
define them. This is particularly suitable if we consider that the same partitive
term could occur for different main concepts: both a belt and a flag could have a
puntale (ferrule) as partitive concept. Therefore, it is important to clearly define
the hierarchy of these kinds of objects. Alternatively, it would be possible to
combine main terms with their partitive terms in order to define complete and
34
Felicetti et al.
self-consistent concepts, to be then defined as narrower terms of the main ones.
In the previous example, we could define, for instance, a new puntale di cintura
(belt ferrule) term, which would be clearly distinguished by a puntale di insegna
(flag ferrule), the two being totally different, although very similar, objects.
2. The morphology and functional specification subterms are meaningless in
themselves. They become meaningful only when combined with their main term.
Creating SKOS narrower terms from these elements requires, for each morpho-
logical or functional term, the creation of a subterm obtained by combination
with the super concept, in order to obtain a set of semantically consistent narrow
terms. There is no semantic meaning in multipla itself unless this concept is used
together with cintura in order to specify, in this case, the typology of a given
belt. Cintura multipla is, on the other hand, a perfectly consistent concept.
Multiple combination of partitive, morphological and functional sub concepts
to create specific entries, even if not impossible, would be very difficult to im-
plement in SKOS due to the exponential growth of all possible combinations. At
present, we propose not to extend the pre-coordination operations beyond the
minimum requirements of semantic understandability and to use more than one
SKOS concept to describe specific archaeological objects if required.
4 SKOS Encoding of RA Thesaurus
From a technological point of view, the RA Thesaurus was created starting
from 2008 on the basis of the terms extracted from the database maintained
by the “Sistema Informativo Generale del Catalogo” (SIGEC). Its development
also went through various phases of data cleaning and strengthening. The RA
Thesaurus is currently an “open vocabulary”, meaning that it is not meant to
have a stable form since its content can be updated and modified by ICCD during
further stages of research. Currently, the available version of the vocabulary is
in textual format that is organized in a tabular structure, whose fields comply
with the ISO standard norms for thesauri. In order to make the original textual
information interoperable and ensure integration with semantic terminological
tools, it was necessary to encode them in a structured and standard format.
The process we implemented for the SKOS encoding of the RA Thesaurus is a
proposal for its re-engineering as a formal ontology and for making the knowledge
it provides explicit in a formal sense. The whole process of encoding required
a set of subsequent steps for data analysis, adjustment, conversion, publication
and enrichment, in which the original textual data has been processed using
both open source tools and ad hoc scripts.
The process can be subdivided into two analytic phases (see Fig. 5):
1. In the first analytic phase we focused on encoding the key fields of the original
thesaurus, such as concepts and classes. The result of the first phase consisted
in the creation of a SKOS/RDF version of the RA Thesaurus obtained through
the mapping between the main concepts and the SKOS Core Vocabulary.
2. In the second phase, we focused on the integration of all morphological, func-
tional and partitive aspects related to thesaurus’ concepts. The analysis of this
35
Integrating Terminological Tools and Semantic Archaeological Information
Fig. 5. SKOS encoding process
additional information required further investigation into how SKOS extensions
could be used for the publication of thesauri in a semantic format.
4.1 Thesaurus Conversion Using SKOS Core Vocabulary
The conversion of the RA Thesaurus initially required a deep data analysis to de-
fine a precise mapping between its main fields and the SKOS Core Vocabulary [6]
in order to use its set of properties and classes to express the conceptual content
of the thesaurus as an RDF graph. The fields examined in the first analytic phase
are levels one and two, containing categories and subcategories, and level four,
containing the main terms for the description of the artefacts. With reference
to level five, we limited our analysis to the functional facet only and we consid-
ered the descriptive notes in the attribute fields. Classes and terms were mapped
using the skos:Concept entity, main terms were mapped as skos:prefLabel, non-
preferential terms as skos:altLabel, notes were encoded using skos:scopeNote. The
skos:broader and skos:narrower properties were used to express the hierarchical
relationships between categories or concepts. The functional specification of a
term was expressed through the skos:narrower relation with a subterm obtained
by combination with the super concept.
Figure 6 shows an example of the mapping expressed by using SKOS entities.
Each concept coming from the RA Thesaurus is represented by a blue circle.
The central circle depicts the concept of Cintura (belt) while the red circle
represents the thesaurus itself. Arrows connecting the various circles represent
the SKOS relationships existing among them. The mapping definition on the
SKOS Core Vocabulary was followed by the use of an ad hoc script and of a
specific tool that allowed the conversion of a huge textual file into RDF format.
36
Felicetti et al.
Fig. 6. Example of mapping expressed by using SKOS entities
At first, the original thesaurus was manipulated and converted in order to create
a CSV file that satisfied some specific technical requirements. The script was
developed in Perl language and was intended to select a specific thesaurus’ subset
of fields, to sort and to clean the information and to convert them into a custom
CSV file. Subsequently, the Stellar Console tool was applied to further elaborate
this file. Stellar Console is an open source command line utility application
developed in the framework of the AHRC-funded project “Semantic Technologies
Enhancing Links and Linked Data for Archaeological Resources” (STELLAR)
[7]. The Console accepts input format such as CSV in order to produce a more
structured output such as SKOS/RDF or CIDOC-CRM/RDF by applying a set
of customizable templates. The templates look for the presence of particular field
names in the input data, and process each row in turn using the values contained
in these fields. The use of the conversion feature from the custom CSV files to
the SKOS/RDF of Stellar Console is the final step for the conversion of the
main subset of RA Thesaurus from a textual format to a structured, semantic
and interoperable format.
4.2 Thesaurus Publication and Enrichment Using SKOS Extensions
In the second analytic phase, the publication of the thesaurus was analysed and
tested on a vocabulary server. Possible solutions for mapping and integrating
the fields that were not converted in the first analytic phase were consequently
studied and tested.
In order to produce the necessary results for the RA Thesaurus publication,
it was important to consider two fundamental aspects. The first was a vocabu-
lary web server supporting international standards such as SKOS and the ISO
37
Integrating Terminological Tools and Semantic Archaeological Information
thesaurus norms; the second was a vocabulary web application which supports
multilingualism, semantic thesauri and data enrichment. All these aspects, in
our opinion, are fundamental to make the RA Thesaurus even more flexible
for future study phases by expanding and integrating it with further multiple
extensions.
We considered different possibilities to achieve the above-mentioned results,
by choosing TemaTres as the most pragmatic solution. TemaTres is an open-
source, web-based thesaurus management package [8] that supports the handling
of vocabularies in accordance with the ISO standard thesaurus norms, including
the last ISO-25964 [9]. The main features of TemaTres include a functional user
interface for editing and browsing, good search capabilities, and the ability to
export all or part of the thesaurus in a number of standardized forms (Json, Json-
LD, SKOS Core, DC etc.). TemaTres easily allows data import in SKOS/RDF
format and some of the more advanced features include the ability to link terms
between two different vocabularies. A test version of TemaTres was installed on
a local server and used to import the SKOS/RDF thesaurus version containing
the main concepts in order to proceed further with the enrichment work. The
TemaTres publication of the RA Thesaurus provides many editing and search
facilities. One of the most important is the ability to customize and automat-
ically generate URIs used to unambiguously identify and reach resources from
any context. For generating suitable URIs we have used - by means of testing
- the official ICCD namespace (http://www.iccd.beniculturali.it), which will be
useful for the future installation of TemaTres on the ICCD server and for the
creation of consistent and unambiguous URI/URL to make the RA Thesaurus
available also in a Linked Open Data format. The conversion of the fields related
to morphological and partitive specification of terms required further actions on
the data. We used the TemaTres administration facilities for this semantic en-
richment. We mapped the morphological specifications using skos:broader and
skos:narrower properties. The partitive specification subterms was mapped us-
ing the last ISO standard on thesauri ISO 25964[10]. One of the innovations
introduced by the current norm is the possibility to make explicit the nature
of semantic relationships, in particular we focused on the changes regarding the
hierarchical relationships. To extend the richness of thesauri, the SKOS Core
hierarchical relationships depicted through the tags BT and NT can be fur-
ther divided into generic (BTG/NTG), partitive (BTP/NTP) and instantial
(NTI/BTI). ISO 25964 specifies that this relationship holds “between a pair of
concepts when the scope of one of them falls completely within the scope of
the other” [11].We introduced the BTP and NTP relationships using the cor-
responding property in the ‘iso-thes’ namespace: iso-thes:broaderPartitive and
iso-thes:narrowerPartitive [12]. The example in Figure 7 shows that a “fibbia
di cintura” (belt buckle) concept stated this way, for instance, specifies that
the fibbia is part of a “cintura” (belt), whereas a “fibbia” (buckle) per se could
also be part of other objects, for instance, a weapon, a garment and so forth.
Therefore, the BTP/NTP relationships cannot be automatically inferred by the
subconcept only because it could be part of many objects.
38
Felicetti et al.
The image field of the RA Thesaurus is also a very interesting case. As al-
ready mentioned, images increase the richness and meaningfulness of concepts,
their presence being sometimes crucial, especially in cases where proper under-
standing of the archaeological objects may remain ambiguous. In a 2005 version
of the SKOS Core Guide W3C Working Draft [13], the Working Group pro-
posed the use of symbolic labels, as part of the labelling properties, to label a
concept with an image. Symbolic labels could be used to assign preferred and
alternative symbolic labels to a concept by means of the skos:prefSymbol and
skos:altSymbol properties. This solution would have been the most appropriate
for the mapping of the RA Thesaurus sample image, but in the subsequent W3C
Recommendation [14], symbolic labelling elements were removed, although no
explicit deprecation axioms were expressed in the schema. In order to achieve
a publication of the thesaurus that complies as far as possible with the W3C
specifications, we preferred not to use the solution proposed in the SKOS Core
Guide W3C Working Draft, but to use the current W3C Recommendation only.
According to the latter, sample images can be regarded as accessorial informa-
tion of the SKOS concepts. The relationship can be mapped using the skos:note
property, considering that there is no restriction on the nature of the information
that the property can associate with the concept.
Fig. 7. Example of mapping expressed by using SKOS extensions
5 Getty AAT Mapping
The AAT thesaurus (Art Architecture Thesaurus - Getty Institute) [15] was
chosen by ARIADNE to represent a common spine and to constitute a facet
39
Integrating Terminological Tools and Semantic Archaeological Information
allowing search and faceted browsing across all the terminological tools that
the project is collecting. Integration will be based on mappings of national/local
vocabularies to the AAT thesaurus. This will allow interoperability over the sub-
ject metadata in different partner languages via the common AAT spine. The
issue of multilingualism is a matter that needs to be taken into account, not
only because of the variety of national thesauri that are going to be integrated
by the ARIADNE initiative, but also for the future creation of common and
transnational terminological tools. Linguistic issues often make the direct map-
ping of a concept via the skos:exactMatch property on AAT concept difficult, but
hopefully the most significant issues will be resolved by the end of the project.
The conceptual mapping between the ICCD RA Thesaurus and AAT has been
completed and revised; for this purpose it was decided to manually construct a
mapping from the various terms and functions (if any), following in sequences
the three main categories of the RA Thesaurus. The work pattern was based
on an Excel representation of the thesaurus to which additional columns were
added in order to specify:
– the targetLabel and the unique identifier ( ID ) of the corresponding defini-
tion/term selected in AAT;
– the SKOS schema properties (skos:closeMatch; skos:exactMatch;
skos:broadMatch and skos:matchURI );
– the name of the institution in charge of the definition of each specific map-
ping (creator).
Only a subset of the RA Thesaurus was taken into account to demonstrate the
feasibility of these operations. The subset includes one thousand, one hundred
and ninety one terms related to ten major categories (highlighted in the original
source as “livello 1 categoria ”) relating to:
– CLOTHING AND ACCESSORIES
– FURNISHING
– TRANSPORTATION
– CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY
– PAINTING
– ARCHAEOBOTANICAL FINDINGS
– ARCHAEOZOOLOGICAL FINDINGS
– SCULPTURE
– INSTRUMENTS - TOOLS AND OBJECTS OF USE
– GENERAL TERMS
The analysis for finding the corresponding entries in the AAT thesaurus took
into account the information provided by scope notes and images accompanying
each concept; extensive web searches were performed to find the most appropri-
ate matching term between Italian and English; and terminological researches
was carried out using different resources to identify synonyms to make the asso-
ciated targetLabel as unique and as precise as possible.
The mapping work has identified :
40
Felicetti et al.
– 457 broadMatch associations
– 104 closeMatch associations
– 630 exactMatch associations
Three examples of association are provided in the following table:
Fig. 8. Example of RA/AAT associations
At the end of the mapping work we can say that the most significant activity,
from the scientific-methodological point of view, has been the review of the whole
process. Started as punctual control “1: 1” of correspondence between the terms
of the two terminology tools (thesaurus ICCD / RA and AAT), this review
has, in fact, been expanding by realizing the mapping of the terminological
categories relating to individual entries with the codes referring to the facet and
the hierarchy AAT. This has made possible:
1. disambiguating and correcting matches previously selected - and often lexi-
cally corrected - but decontextualized from the original domain of belonging;
2. providing the basis for a future matching job between different categories of
multilingual thesauri.
It is worth underlining that the focus of the whole work of mapping is the concept
of individual terms meant as records entered in a complete hierarchical structure
of related terms and notes. Among the results which have been achieved - and
which are highlighted though the mapping between classes - we can state the
high level of correspondence between the ICCD/RA thesaurus entries and the
AAT Thesaurus record types. Out of one thousand, one hundred and ninety one
basic records one thousand, one hundred and sixty four among them are linked
to “concept” and only twenty seven to “guide term”. According to the AAT
Thesaurus guidelines:
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Integrating Terminological Tools and Semantic Archaeological Information
– Concept: Refers to records in the AAT that represent concepts; records for
concepts include terms, a note, and bibliography.
– Guide term: Refers to records that serve as place savers to create a level in
the hierarchy under which the AAT can collocate related concepts. Guide
terms are not used for indexing or cataloguing.
6 Conclusions and Further work
The study and analysis of the RA Thesaurus allowed us to fully understand
the complexity of the challenges arising from the need to define, by means of
standard nomenclatures, objects of such various and multifaceted nature as ar-
chaeological objects are. The ICCD RA vocabulary, being the result of years of
research by a team of experts in the field of Cultural Heritage, is definitely an
irreplaceable resource that adequately meets this need. Its structure is certainly
an important point of arrival on the road to standardization. From a method-
ological point of view, the work carried out has highlighted both conceptual and
procedural challenges that arise when attempts are made to handle a complex
structure in a standard tool. The results achieved so far are considered satisfac-
tory, also in consideration of the fact that the work is at an intermediate stage
and that further studies and investigations will be necessary before the conver-
sion of the entire thesaurus can be completed. Future activities will include a
clear and unambiguous definition of complex concepts, such as those arising from
the combination of multiple terms and subterms; and the definition of precise
criteria for the inclusion of images, which, as stated, is one of the distinctive fea-
tures of this vocabulary. The choice of AAT as the common standard partially
solves the multilingualism issues, providing labels in different languages for the
terms already mapped. We must instead provide appropriate translations for
those that have no equivalent in the thesaurus of the Getty Institute. At the end
of the ARIADNE project, the RA Thesaurus will become part of the rich set of
terminological tools that the project is already collecting in order to integrate
them into the platform on which real interoperability will take place. The ARI-
ADNE Portal will make this resource available and easily accessible online for
external use outside of the project. The publication as Linked Open Data, also
provided by the project, will guarantee its availability in other Cultural Heritage
scenarios.
7 Acknowledgements
The present work has been supported by the ARIADNE project, funded by the
European Commission (grant 313193) under the FP7 INFRA-2012-1.1.3 call.
The authors opinion do not necessarily reflect those of the European Commission
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