Presentation by Kate Fernie, Dimitris Gavrilis and Anthony Corns given at the European Association of Archaeologists conference 2018. CARARE, a membership association established in Ireland, defined a metadata schema to enable the harvesting and aggregation of collections of digital archaeological and heritage content from 20+ providers across Europe. The schema was based on CIDOC core standards, MIDAS heritage, LIDO and the Europeana Data model. The data model differentiates between heritage assets (ranging from monuments and buildings to objects, photographs, drawings and 3D models) and their digital representations available online, related events and contextual information about collections, actors etc. The standards on which the CARARE schema was based were developed when monument inventories and museum catelogues were recorded on cards, and this legacy of analogue recording practices is evident. Today we can describe a digital heritage landscape - a wealth of digital information (both born digital and digitised) is available. Archaeological monuments and historic buildings are complex and dynamic objects. Recent events in Brazil show the vulnerability of historic buildings to fire. Most buildings and monuments have associations with various events and people. A wealth of digital information is becoming available for both the tangible and intangible aspects of these heritage assets. In developing version 3 of the CARARE metadata schema, our aim has been both to increase the support for RDF and Linked Data resources and to make the schema more "developer-friendly". One of the main challenges for CARARE in aggregating metadata from institutions across Europe is increasing the support for multilingualism, which we're addressing by encouraging the use of AAT and mapping vocabularies to AAT. We are currently pilot testing the schema against a set of use cases, in an implementation of semantic Omeka and in the future will look at the implementation of CARARE 3 in HBIM.

1. Connecting archaeology and
architecture data
Kate Fernie, 2Culture Associates
Dimitris Gavrilis, Athena Research Centre
Antony Corns, Discovery Programme
European Association of Archaeologists conference
8 September 2018

2. CARARE and metadata
CARARE began life as an EC-funded project aggregating metadata from
29 partners in 21 countries.
We defined a standards and community driven metadata model
• Based on CIDOC core standards, MIDAS Heritage, LIDO and EDM
Version 1 of the schema enabled:
http://www.carare.eu/
Metadata
schema
Local
repository /
dataset
Semantic
mapping and
transformation
Aggregation
international
repository
• Harvesting of diverse collections and
• Transformation of provided metadata
into a common format
• Enabled the supply of metadata to
Europeana

3. • Distinguishes “heritage assets” – painting, book, drawing, image,
film, 3D reconstruction, a monument/ historic building inventory
record from
• Digital representations (or digital resources) of the heritage asset
which can be found online
• Allows for events (historical, field activities, laboratory work)
• Includes collection and other contextual information
• Allows for relationships
Schema rationale
Analogue legacy?
Image: Swedish National Heritage Board

4. Digital heritage landscape
• Archaeological monuments and historic buildings are complex, multi-
layered objects with dynamic lives
• There is a wealth of digital information for both the tangible and
intangible heritage
• Increasing numbers of reference resources available online
Images: The Discovery Programme, Centre for Archaeology

5. Enabling connections
Heritage asset
Linked data
Has
representation
Images: Instituto Universitario de Investigación en Arqueología Ibérica
“Hornos de Peal, Jaén”
Has
representation
is related
Version 3 of the CARARE metadata schema:
• Increases support for semantic web
• Less flat more dynamic
• Better support for Linked Data
• and for developers
Subject
concepts, time,
place

6. Big data?
• Volume – 2-3 million assets, more digital objects
• Institutions in c 25 countries
• 20+ languages
• Connecting to Linked Data resources:
• enables multilingual data
• Adds place-names, adds coordinates
• Automated enrichment is possible but not easy
place
subject
time

7. Any questions? kfernie27@gmail.com
Challenges and next steps
• We still lack shared interoperable and multilingual vocabularies
for archaeology and architecture
• Mapping vocabularies to AAT helps but doesn’t solve all the retrieval
or language issues
• Finalising version 3.0 of the schema
• Testing, mapping to related schemas, prototyping
• Development of use cases
• Data capture
• 3D and HBIM
• Supporting take-up, involving new members in CARARE
www.carare.eu/