This document is maintained by the Ontology Working Group of Epigraphy.info. (https://epigraphy-info.github.io/epigraphy-info/) Any request or contribution should be made via the Epigraphic Ontology Mailing List of the Epigraphic Ontology WG <epont@googlegroups.com> Contributors are listed alphabetically. Not all listed contributors have confirmed.
In this paper we describe the process of inclusion of etymological information in a knowledge base of interoperable Latin linguistic resources developed in the context of the LiLa: Linking Latin project. Interoperability is obtained by applying the Linked Open Data principles. Particularly, an extensive collection of Latin lemmas is used to link the (distributed) resources. For the etymology, we rely on the Ontolex-lemon ontology and the lemonEty extension to model the information, while the source data are taken from a recent etymological dictionary of Latin. As a result, the collection of lemmas LiLa is built around now includes 1,465 Proto-Italic and 1,393 Proto-Indo-European reconstructed forms that are used to explain the history of 1,400 Latin words. We discuss the motivation, methodology and modeling strategies of the work, as well as its possible applications and potential future developments.
This paper presents the structure of the LiLa Knowledge Base, i.e. a collection of multifarious linguistic resources for Latin described with the same vocabulary of knowledge description and interlinked according to the principles of the so-called Linked Data paradigm. Following its highly lexically based nature, the core of the LiLa Knowledge Base consists of a large collection of Latin lemmas, serving as the backbone to achieve interoperability between the resources, by linking all those entries in lexical resources and tokens in corpora that point to the same lemma. After detailing the architecture supporting LiLa, the paper particularly focusses on how we approach the challenges raised by harmonizing different strategies of lemmatization that can be found in linguistic resources for Latin. As an example of the process to connect a linguistic resource to LiLa, the inclusion in the Knowledge Base of a dependency treebank is described and evaluated.
As the need for solid and interoperable heritage documentation models and systems becomes bigger, addressing aspects of representing archaeological and textual/epigraphical information adds special importance and value. Towards this end, this paper explores the use of CIDOC CRM and CRMtex to represent epigraphical heritage information. This paper aims to (1) describe, study and explain how ancient funerary inscriptions can be represented through CIDOC CRM and its extensions, (2) examine these archaeological and textual objects at two levels: (a) physical description, including size, shape, material, text and symbols, and b) interpretations, including chronology, text content, other archaeological interpretation. Our work consists of a case study based on a funerary inscription with a Greek inscription of the 5th century AD discovered in Ghor as-Safi (Byzantine Zoora or Zoara) in modern Jordan. This inscription is a typical example of funerary inscriptions in the area and the world, as it contains the basic information frequently found on similar object: name of the deceased, age, date of death, symbols. CIDOC CRM and CRMtex has been used to represent the production and the physical characteristics of a funerary inscription, its textual information (including ancient writing, transcription and translation) and cultural information content, its date, and its current condition and location. This case study initiates the work towards a model and an automated system for archaeological/epigraphical documentation and data integration.
The development of graffiti studies during the last couple of decades highlighted the relevance and potential of graffiti as a complementary source for understanding different aspects of past societies. Moreover, the availability of digital documentation techniques crucially increased data production, showing the widespread presence of graffiti in Medieval and Early Modern contexts across Europe.However, the approach to historical graffiti has not been yet structured. Guidelines, specific analytical tools, and descriptors are still missing due to various reasons. First, graffiti are a multiform and multimodal graphic expression, so texts, signs, and images must be considered together despite their different communicative nature. Secondly, due to their variety in forms and contents, graffiti have been studied from many perspectives (e.g., epigraphy, palaeography, history, art history, maritime studies), following the specific interests of each scholar. Consequently, the numerous and extensive contributions concerning graffiti highlight the lack of shared standards and approaches, hindering data analysis and interoperability. The panorama emerging is fragmentary and unstructured.This article thus aims to offer a first step toward the development of a specific methodology for the analysis and study of Medieval and Early Modern European graffiti. Precisely, a specific ontology adopting CIDOC CRM for Medieval and Early Modern graffiti will be presented, as developed in a preliminary form within the DIGIGRAF project1 with the support of the ARIADNEplus2 network.