Cite this as: Aspöck, E., Eichert, S., Theodoridou, M., Felicetti, A. and Richards, N. 2023 Integrating Data on Early Medieval Graves: Mapping the THANADOS database to the ARIADNE infrastructure with the Mortuary Data Application Profile, Internet Archaeology 64. https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.64.11
This article discusses the creation of an Application Profile (AP) for mortuary data and how it was used to integrate the THANADOS anthropological and archaeological database of sepultures in the ARIADNEplus infrastructure.
Ontologies increase data interoperability and their potential for being reused. The CIDOC CRM is a formal ontology designed to facilitate the integration, mediation, and interchange of heterogeneous cultural heritage information. APs provide exemplary mappings that other researchers can use as an orientation. For creating and testing the ARIADNE mortuary data AP, data from early medieval cemeteries provided an ideal case study because of the high degree of similarity between sites.
The mapping of early medieval cemetery data has shown that mapping to an ontology contributes to data interoperability in several ways. Firstly, it may reveal inconsistencies in the native dataset and improve data organisation for future projects. Secondly, it enables the querying of information concerning graves and cemeteries from different sources across the ARIADNE infrastructure. Finally, this article provides an example of how archaeological data can be aggregated across multiple providers.
Corresponding author: Edeltraud Aspöck
edeltraud.aspoeck@oeaw.ac.at
Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage/Austrian Archaeological Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Bäckerstrasse 13, 1010 Vienna, Austria
Stefan Eichert
Natural History Museum Vienna, Department of Prehistory
Maria Theodoridou
Institute of Computer Science, Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas, Greece
Achille Felicetti
VASTLAB - PIN S.c.R.L., Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy
Nina Richards
Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage/Austrian Archaeological Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria
Figure 1: Graphic representation of research activities leading to type 1 and 2 datasets
Figure 2: Entities and relationships of activities leading to type 3 datasets
Figure 3: Typical hierarchical structure and entities of early medieval cemetery databases. A feature may contain multiple deposits
Figure 4: Entities of an early medieval cemetery database and suggested mappings
Figure 5: THANADOS CRM mapping of a cemetery
Figure 6: THANADOS CRM mapping of the hierarchy. Each level can have the same network structure as the level above
Figure 7: 3M Mapping Memory Manager interface showing the mapping of the four main tables corresponding to the four main entities of THANADOS
Figure 8: The top level collection of THANADOS on the ARIADNEplus portal
Figure 9: The burial site of Friedlach on the ARIADNEplus portal
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