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A new international project is starting in 2025 between University of Helsinki (UH) (HELDIG/ HSSH, PI Dr. Jouni Tuominen), KU Leuven (PI Prof. Pieterjan Deckers), and Aalto University, Dept. of Computer Science (PI Prof. Eero Hyvönen) on applying Semantic Web technologies to archaeological Digital Humanities. The project also includes collaborations with the University of Reading and the British Museum, UK (Dr. Eljas Oksanen).

Problem statement

Since the 19th century, archaeological artefacts have been organised into typologies by their morphological features, such as form, production technique and decoration. Such data is of great value for Digital Humanities (DH) research. However, while the cataloguing frameworks in use today are powerful tools for assessing, categorising and investigating archaeological materials, they come with inherent limitations:

1. The frameworks are not multivocal. Typologies rely on hierarchical organisation of traits where deliberate ontological choices have been made to best serve typically one purpose. However, there are numerous other possible ways to organise the material for other needs.
2. The frameworks are inflexible. As new finds are made or the scope of an archaeological category is redefined, existing “fossilised” classification schemes may no longer suffice but they are difficult to modify and extend. This problem is exacerbated when digitising collections.
3. The frameworks are not transnational. The frameworks are rooted in national and sometimes problematic conceptions of culture, and often limited by the constraints imposed by the scholarly traditions in modern nation states. Typically, each artefact is given its place in a phylogenetic tree, with impact on both scientific analysis (e.g., for artefact chronology) and for public perception (e.g., regarding cultural associations of artefacts).
4. The frameworks are largely not interoperable from a semantic point of view, making them unsuitable for aggregated services, FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable) data publications and for developing web services.

The ARCH-ON project addresses these fundamental issues of representing archaeological knowledge for Digital Humanities research in a transnational setting. It develops a new ontology-based semantic approach to archaeological knowledge representation (KR), using FAIR data principles and semantic web technologies.

The project is part of the seed-funding programme boosting collaborations between the UH, KU Leuven, and Aalto. It builds upon our earlier work on archaeological DH systems in Finland based on Linked Open Data, including:

• FindSampo – Achaeological Finds on the Semantic Web
• CoinSampo – Finnish Numismatic Public Finds 2013-2023
• PASampo – Portable Antiquity Scheme of the British Museum on the Semantic Web
• ARIADNEplus – A data infrastructure serving the archaeological community worldwide

Research Team PIs at the Aalto University, University of Helsinki and KU Leuven

• Prof. Eero Hyvönen, Aalto University (SeCo) and University of Helsinki (HELDIG)
• Dr. Jouni Tuominen, University of Helsinki, HELDIG and HSSH (SeCo)
• Prof. Pieterjan Dekkers, KU Leuven

2024

2023

2022

2021