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Another research project that has explored <strong>in</strong>tegrat<strong>in</strong>g diverse data sets <strong>in</strong> archaeology is the STAR-
Semantic Technologies for Archaeology Resources) Project 222 based at the University of Glamorgan.
This AHRC-funded project worked <strong>in</strong> collaboration with English Heritage (EH) 223 to develop
semantic technologies that could be used <strong>in</strong> the doma<strong>in</strong> of digital archaeology. They sought to
demonstrate the utility of cross-search<strong>in</strong>g archaeological data that were expressed as RDF and that
conformed to a s<strong>in</strong>gle ontological scheme (B<strong>in</strong>d<strong>in</strong>g et al. 2008). For this ontological scheme, B<strong>in</strong>d<strong>in</strong>g
et al. (2008) expla<strong>in</strong>ed that they had created a “modular RDF extension” of CRM-EH, 224 an
archaeological extension of the CIDOC-CRM that had been produced by EH but had previously only
existed on paper. “The <strong>in</strong>itial work on the CRM-EH was prompted by a need to model the
archaeological processes and concepts <strong>in</strong> use by the (EH) archaeological teams,” B<strong>in</strong>d<strong>in</strong>g et al. (2008)
expla<strong>in</strong>ed, “to <strong>in</strong>form future systems design and to aid <strong>in</strong> the potential <strong>in</strong>tegration of archaeological
<strong>in</strong>formation <strong>in</strong> <strong>in</strong>teroperable web based research <strong>in</strong>itiatives.” It was hoped that the design of a common
ontology would support greater “cross doma<strong>in</strong> search<strong>in</strong>g” and more “semantic depth” for
archaeological queries.
The STAR project mapped five archaeological databases, each with its own unique schema, to the
CRM-EH ontology. The <strong>in</strong>itial mapp<strong>in</strong>g between database columns and RDF entities was undertaken
manually with the assistance of doma<strong>in</strong> experts for one of these databases; this mapp<strong>in</strong>g was then used
to extrapolate the mapp<strong>in</strong>gs for the other databases. After the data from these five databases were
mapped to the CRM-EH, a complicated data-extraction process that <strong>in</strong>volved the creation of unique
identifiers, the model<strong>in</strong>g of events through the creation of <strong>in</strong>termediate “virtual” entities, and the
model<strong>in</strong>g of “data <strong>in</strong>stance values” was undertaken. A mapp<strong>in</strong>g and extraction utility was built to
allow users to query the archaeological data and then save their query as an XML file for later reuse
and the results of their query as tabular data <strong>in</strong> an RDF format. To help users work with the extracted
archaeological data that were stored as RDF, the STAR project <strong>in</strong>itially built a prototype
“search/browse application” where the extracted data were stored <strong>in</strong> a MySQL 225 RDF triplestore 226
and users could query it us<strong>in</strong>g a CRM-based web service. This RDF data store not only holds the
CRM-EH ontology and the “amalgamated data” from the separate archaeological databases but also
<strong>in</strong>cludes a number of important doma<strong>in</strong>-specific thesauri and glossaries that are represented <strong>in</strong> SKOS
(B<strong>in</strong>d<strong>in</strong>g 2010). 227
Mov<strong>in</strong>g beyond this <strong>in</strong>itial prototype, the STAR project website offers access to a full research
demonstrator 228 that provides a SPARQL 229 -based semantic search not only of the extracted databases
but also of an archaeological grey literature collection made available to them by the ADS. 230 They
used NLP <strong>in</strong>formation-extraction techniques 231 to identify key concepts <strong>in</strong> the grey literature that were
222 http://hypermedia.research.glam.ac.uk/kos/star/
223 http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/
224 http://hypermedia.research.glam.ac.uk/resources/crm/
225 MySQL is a “relational database management system that runs as a server provid<strong>in</strong>g multi-user access to a number of databases”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MySQL). The source code for MySQL has been made available under a GNU General Public License and is a popular choice
of “database for use <strong>in</strong> web applications.”
226 A triplestore is a “purpose-built database for the storage and retrieval of Resource Description Framework (RDF) metadata”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triplestore#) and they are designed for the storage and retrieval of statements known as triples, “<strong>in</strong> the form of subjectpredicate-object”
as are used <strong>in</strong> the creation of RDF statements.
227 SKOS stands for “Simple Knowledge Organization System” and provides a RDF model for encod<strong>in</strong>g reference tool such as thesauri, taxonomies, and
classification systems. SKOS is under active development as part of the W3C’s Semantic Web activity (http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/)
228 http://hypermedia.research.glam.ac.uk/resources/star-demonstrator/
229 http://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-sparql-query/
230 The grey literature collection that the STAR project used was an “extract of the OASIS corpus” that is ma<strong>in</strong>ta<strong>in</strong>ed by the ADS. The OASIS (Onl<strong>in</strong>e
AccesS to the Index of archaeological <strong>in</strong>vestigationS) (http://oasis.ac.uk/) corpus seeks to “provide an onl<strong>in</strong>e <strong>in</strong>dex to the mass of archaeological grey
literature that has been produced as a result of the advent of large-scale developer funded fieldwork.”
231 The STAR project made use of GATE (http://gate.ac.uk/)