Articles by Florian Thiery

FAIRification and sharing of open data is an important aspect of the German National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) and its archaeology related consortium NFDI4Objects. NFDI4Objects offers domain-specific data-driven hubs to publish and share research data, Linked Open Data (LOD), ontologies, community-driven vocabularies and authority files, such as thesauri. This paper demonstrates the content, challenges and possibilities of the Data Hub ‘archaeology.link’. It consists of five thematic parts: 1) Semantic Modelling using the Linked Archaeological Data Ontology (LADO), 2) publication of domain-specific Linked Open Data, 3) community-driven vocabularies such as thesauri, 4) ontologies and 5) research tools.

Archaeological research must handle issues such as vagueness and uncertainty in data modelling. Especially vagueness and uncertainty must be modelled to work with geodata. However, for linking data and FAIRification graph-based modelling as Linked Open Data (LOD) proposed by Berners-Lee is the method and technique of choice. This paper discusses three data-driven interdisciplinary use cases of dealing with and modelling vague and uncertain geo-references (here especially findspots) based on literature as LOD from the archaeological and geosciences domain (Irish Ogham Stones, Campanian Ignimbrite, and Silver Coinage of Croton), implementing three modelling strategies using Wikidata, Linked Open Data and Wikibase.

The Linked Open Ogham Data Project was set up in 2019 by the Research Squirrel Engineers Network and supported by the Wikimedia Germany Open Science Fellows Program in 2020/2021. In 2022 an Ogham survey was done in Ireland to record Ogham stones in the field and museums. The project aims at providing and integrating Ogham Data in community hubs such as Wikidata and Open Street Map (OSM). This paper shows a hybrid Ogham LOD workflow, based on the idea of Open Science, Open Software, Open Data and the FAIR principles to create re-usability and modular IT infrastructure with community standards and commonly-used interfaces. Furthermore, the paper shows examples of Ogham stones from the Dingle and Iveragh Peninsulas in OSM and gives a deeper insight into the inscriptions and mentioned Ogham-specific formula words and names.

In 2020, the Samian Research database began a process of integrating its data within Wikidata through the creation of a set of Samian Research Wikidata items, including Samian Ware Discovery Sites, Samian Ware kiln sites and kiln regions, comprising accurate or approximate geospatial information and a backlink to the Linked Open Data hub ‘archaeology.link’. This approach of creating designated Wikidata items is an efficient way to map the enormous geographic reach of our subject and to call attention to many European archaeological sites and excavations that hitherto lacked a Wikidata identifier. The site of Corinth illustrates an exemplary issue to be solved: ambiguity and different archaeological concepts and ideas. E.g., is it correct to merge Corinth as a Samian Ware Discovery Site with the archaeological site of ancient Corinth? To solve the issue, the broader Wikidata community must be enlisted. This paper describes the challenges in the use case of Corinth and offers solutions within Wikidata.