Building Digital Collections for Archeological Sites: metadata Requirements and CIDOC CRM Extension

Abstract

Cultural heritage information management and provision can be improved by the usage of Internet and related technologies. The research effort presented in this paper focuses on the creation of a digital collec- tion representing an archeological site. Such a collec- tion is composed of digital entities representing monu- ments and describing them using proper metadata. Such a metadata model should provide information for the monuments, ease the visitation of the site by Internet users and promote it. It can be based on CIDOC CRM, which is a formal ontology for the uniform description of cultural resources. CIDOC CRM’s specification focuses on museum documentation, thus it is necessary to extend the ontological model to effectively describe archeological sites, emphasizing spatial characteristics and facilitating the integration of the archeological site monuments with exhibits hosted in other sites, for example museums. Thus, metadata fields describing the structure of physical objects, e.g. monuments, and spatial and conceptual correlations between exhibits are explored.