Periods, Organized (PeriodO): a Linked Data gazetteer to bridge the gap between concept and usage in...

A Linked Data gazetteer to bridge

the gap between concept and usage

in archaeological periodization

Adam Rabinowitz, The University of Texas at Austin

Ryan Shaw, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Eric Kansa, Open Context and The University of California at Berkeley

@perio_do

And then in turn wide-browed Zeus established another, fifth

race of men, who were born on the much-nourishing earth. I

ought never to have been among this fifth race of men, but I

should have died before or been born later. For now it is a

race of iron: they never stop from toil and lament by day, nor

by night from wasting away.

Hesiod, Works and Days, 169c-178 (7th c. BC?)

Rabinowitz, Shaw, Kansa @perio_do CAA 2014 24.4.14

The Iron Age: a very old period

Getty AAT scope note for Iron Age

Refers to the period and culture associated with the third

age in the Three Age system developed by Christian

Jürgensen Thomsen in 1836. Iron Age culture typically

developed from the Bronze Age at the point when the

qualities of iron were exploited, particularly through

carburization, in the manufacture of tools, weapons, and

implements. It developed at different times in various parts

of the world, first appearing in the Middle East and

southeastern Europe around 1,200 BCE, and in China

around 600 BCE. In the Americas, it did not develop from

the Bronze Age but was introduced to Stone Age cultures by

European explorers.


British Museum period thesaurus (XML)


British Museum period thesaurus (RDF)


skos:scopeNote:

The Early Cycladic period (3200BC – 2000BC) refers to

material produced in the Cyclades during the Aegean Early

Bronze Age. Although it is part of the tripartite scheme (Early,

Middle and Late) into which the Aegean Bronze Age is

conventionally divided, it is difficult to apply the same

subdivisions (I,II,III) as for Early Minoan or Early Helladic. For

this reason it is divided into partly overlapping cultural groups,

initially defined by Colin Renfrew. The three main groups used

to subdivide the period are Grotta-Pelos (q.v.), Keros-Syros

(q.v.) and Phylakopi I (q.v.).

British Museum period thesaurus (RDF)

Rabinowitz, Shaw, Kansa CAA 2014 24.4.14

ARENA Portal Period Search (ADS)

http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/arena/search/period.cfm


FASTI Online Geographic Periodization

http://fastionline.org/


STAR.timeline service client, English Heritage data

http://reswin1.isd.glam.ac.uk/STAR/UI/timelineclient.html


Digital Index of North American

Archaeology (DINAA)• NSF funded publication of state

site file data (from regulatory compliance)

• ~700 period concepts from 11 US-states

• PIs: David G. Anderson, Joshua Wells

DINAA and decentralized period concepts


1M-00000000122000110221(Roman: 2000 – 1470 BP)

1M-01001322312033201102(Middle Paleolithic: 300KYA – 30KYA)

1M-00000000312010332212(Iron Age: 3100 – 2500 BP)

• Need to define earliest and latest possible dates for a tiling grid

• Latest is 0 BP, example below is 1 Million BP (Open Context allows

10MYA).

• Recursive function to compute tile from earliest and latest BP date as

input. (Source code: https://github.com/ekansa/open-context-code)

• Tiles can be converted back to earliest and latest dates.

• Like map-tiles, time-tiles easily aggregate at different scales by

lumping together characters of the same value from left to right.

Shaded regions show different aggregations of time-tiles.

• Tiles allow arbitrary time ranges to be used in faceted search.

• Time-tiles can be combined with controlled vocabulary of named

periods (in development with DINAA).

Open Context “Time Tiles” (Kansa et al., SAA 2014)


https://github.com/ekansa/open-context-code

Topotime, temporal geometry, and visualization

http://dh.stanford.edu/topotime/


Pleiades, Pelagios, and spacetime complexity


The basic PeriodO data model


DOI for assertion (minted by

CDL EZID system)

Start and end dates expressed as

Julian Day Number

URI for authority (e.g. VIAF)

URI for geographic coverage

(e.g. GeoNames or Wikidata)

An assertion expressed in JSON-LD


Julian Day Numbers

• Interval endpoints (start, [latest start], end, [earliest end]) will be

normalized as Julian Day Numbers: float values expressed in

scientific notation.

• The number of significant digits expresses the precision:

Normalized

value

Significant

digitsRange interpretation

1.3E6 2JDN 1,250,000

to JDN 1,350,0001150BC ±150 years

1.30E6 3JDN 1,295,000

to JDN 1,305,0001150BC ±15 years

1.300E6 4JDN 1,299,500

to JDN 1,300,500 1150BC ±1.5 years


PeriodO Architecture

JSON-LDJSON-LDJSON-LD

JSON-LD

documents

git client(power users &

core collaborators)

HTML5 app(search, visualization, editing)

serves HTML5 app

proxy for EZID API

mints DOIs for

period assertions


HTML5 Application

• Search and browse period assertions

comparable to Virtual International Authority File of

name authority clusters

• Visually compare temporal ranges of assertions

comparable to ARENA Portal period search chart or

the STAR.Timeline client

• Add and edit period assertions

edit data stored locally in browser, then push to

GitHub and issue a pull request


http://viaf.org

http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/arena/search/period.cfm

http://reswin1.isd.glam.ac.uk/STAR/UI/timelineclient.html

Search and visualization use-cases

• What period terms are used to describe the archaeological record in a particular place?

• What period terms are used to describe the archaeological record during a particular time range?

• What period terms are used to describe material from a particular place AND time?

• What are the points of disagreement between scholars with regard to particular period concepts?

• What chronological range do scholars agree on with regard to particular period concepts?


Assertions, Instances, and URIs

• If a range of assertions made at different points in time are collected, can highlight scholarly disagreements and diachronic changes in period concepts

• If period assertions can be connected with instances of use (in publications or in datasets), chronological and geographic scope can be refined and networks of intellectual influence established

• With enough data, gazetteer could serve as machine-learning training dataset for mining chronological information from texts

• Period assertion URIs, like URIs for places and people, can be used across datasets, allowing linking and chronological reconciliation without enforcing use of a single master period thesaurus


Back to the Iron Age


http://perio.doWe gratefully acknowledge the support of the National Endowment for the

Humanities and the NEH Office of Digital Humanities, the members of our

advisory board, and the partners whose period thesauri form our core dataset


Periods, Organized (PeriodO): a Linked Data gazetteer to bridge the gap between concept and usage in...

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