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    Ontological Modelling for Archaeological Data
    (The Eurographics Association, 2006) D'Andrea, Andrea; Marchese, Giulia; Zoppi, Tommaso; Marinos Ioannides and David Arnold and Franco Niccolucci and Katerina Mania
    The need to investigate an archaeological context causes the inevitable destruction of the upper strata in favour of the lower ones. On-site research activity therefore translates into a documentation activity (forms/photographs/surveys), which must be as neutral as possible and not necessarily biased by the scientific interests of the archaeologist. This documentation activity has recently been subjected to an indepth analysis and evaluation. A wide spectrum of standards and reference regulations is being defined by different national and international Organisations. The various attempts made at normalizing the production of documents of excavations have lead to the elaboration of a large number of forms. The introduction of computer science in the management of archaeological records has actually complicated the picture because it has added different formats, software and operating systems, chosen by each individual researcher. Considering how dangerous it is to convert older data to newer digital formats, as is any translation from one language to another, we started a project aiming at defining an ontology able to guarantee interoperability between different archives without modifying, altering or sacrificing the archives created by each archaeologist. The primary objective of our research has been to analyse the Italian documentation produced during the stratigraphical excavation, which represents the most consistent corpus of data available also in digital format. We chose the CIDOC-CRM because it is event-oriented. In terms of content, the archaeological documentation activity may be easily schematized: it documents a past event occurring during an archaeological era and, at the same time, it documents the action of the modern-day scholar. Any excavation activity and its pertinent methodology may be easily described following this conceptual formalism.
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    An Ontology for 3D Cultural Objects
    (The Eurographics Association, 2006) Niccolucci, Franco; D'Andrea, Andrea; Marinos Ioannides and David Arnold and Franco Niccolucci and Katerina Mania
    3D cultural objects are digital 3D replicas of objects having a cultural value, as models of artefacts, reconstructions of buildings, sites and landscapes. As such, they have a twofold nature, and inherit properties both from their digital nature, like the shape and texture, and from the cultural content, for instance to be used for scholarly purposes or communication to the public. In some cases, one of the natures prevails on the other. This may be the case because the object is being processed, e.g. visualized on a computer, or scrutinized by heritage scholars for review. In a few others, it is unfortunately the user s narrow-minded attitude that leads to take into account only one nature of such an object and neglect the other. It is therefore necessary to explore a way of documenting 3D cultural objects that keeps together all the relevant information, both the cultural and the digital one. In this paper we propose an ontology for such complex objects that owns the following important properties: i) it is sufficiently general to encompass very different artefacts, from pottery sherds to historical landscapes; ii) it fully complies with international standards for heritage, in this case CIDOC-CRM, of which it can be shown to be a specialization/ extension; iii) it is sufficiently simple to be used and understood by heritage practitioners and professionals with moderate computer skills, and documents items in a plain, human readable and understandable way; iv) items documented as instances of this ontology can be efficiently processed for the most frequent purposes, as computer visualization, retrieval of cultural information or storage in a database; v) it is ready for compliance with other important requirements, as for instance the proposed charter on credibility known as London Charter.