Bogdan ȘANDRIC, Marius STREINU, Dan MATEI, Alina IANCU, Georgiana DINU, Bianca GRIGORAȘ, Oana BORLEAN, Marian TUARU (Institutul Național al Patrimoniului, Bucureşti, România)

Preparing the National Archaeological Repertory for ARIADNEplus

This presentation concerns the documentation of 2,550 archaeological sites, representing the same number of records in the National Archaeological Repertory (RAN) database, and the preparation of the records for the ARIADNEplus data catalogue and portal. The documentation activity consisted of:

– correcting and updating existing records and creating new ones in the database with information taken from archaeological literature, unpublished archaeological research reports, and historical studies for general and zonal urban plans;

– mapping archaeological sites in a geographical information system (GIS) by determining the geographical coordinates and achieving the spatial delimitation of archaeological sites both as point and polygons vectors;

– identifying representative photographs for archaeological sites and uploading them to the National Archaeological Repertory database and recording descriptive metadata for each photograph.

Within the ARIADNEplus project we are preparing the conversion of the records from the National Archaeological Repertory (RAN) database to the ontology and data format of ARIADNEplus. First, in order to understand and visualize the ARIADNEplus data catalogue ontology (AO-Cat), a program was developed to translate the ontology from Resource Description Framework (RDF) format into a CSV visualization format. This allows the representation of the hierarchy of AO-Cat classes and properties.

Then the actual program for converting RAN records to the import format of ARIADNEplus was developed, respecting the specific ontology. The finalization of this program involved a technical dialogue with the ARIADNEplus team in Athens. This team was very helpful, especially in solving the terminological problems, i.e. establishing the procedure for mapping the RAN descriptors to concepts of the Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus, and mapping the historical periods to the PeriodO vocabulary.

The mapping of the historical periods is currently being finalized and the delivery of the first significant set of RAN archaeological data records will follow.