Semantic Tools for Archaeological Resources

Increasingly within archaeology, the Web is used for dissemination of datasets. This contributes to the growing amount of information on the ‘deep web’, which a recent Bright Planet study estimated to be 500 times larger than the ‘surface web’. However Google and other web search engines are ill equipped to retrieve information from the richly structured databases that are key resources for humanities scholars. Important archaeological results and reports are also appearing as grey literature, before or instead of traditional publication. Typically these are not indexed or made available for searching other than as ordinary web documents. It is difficult using conventional search engines to link these to datasets or indeed to search them using terminology other than that employed by the authors.

Cultural heritage and memory institutions generally are seeking to expose databases and repositories of digitised items, previously confined to specialists, to a wider academic and general audience. The mapping from lay (or related subject area) terminology to technical vocabularies in a particular domain is a critical problem. There is a need for tools to help formulate and refine searches and navigate through the information space of concepts used to describe a collection. Different people use different words for the same concept or may employ slightly different concepts and this ‘vocabulary problem’ is a barrier to widening scholarly access.

Aims
To investigate the potential of semantic terminology tools for widening and improving access to digital archaeology resources, including disparate data sets and associated grey literature.

Objectives
Open up the grey literature to scholarly research by investigating the combination of linguistic and KOS-based methods in the digital archaeology domain.

Develop new methods for enhancing linkages between digital archive database resources and to associated grey literature, exploiting the potential of a high level, core ontology.

Apply multi-concept query generalisation techniques to archaeology cross-domain research.

Design and implement a demonstrator search system, in collaboration with English Heritage.

Evaluate the demonstrator with a view to cost / benefit issues and application more widely in the archaeological domain.

Engage with the archaeological community to inform research and disseminate outcomes.