Numismatics: a case study in Linked Data

Andrew Meadows

Ethan Gruber

What’s so great about coins?

Known point of origin (Places)

Known issuer (People; roles)

Known point of discovery

(Places; contexts)

Decorated (Iconography; religion)

Inscribed (Titulature;Text)ΤΥΡΟΥΙΕΡΑΣΚΑΙΑΣΥΛΟΥ

SPQR ImperatoriCaesari Quod ViaeMunitaeSunt Ex Ea PecuniaQuae IussuSenatus Ad AerariumDelataEst

Quantifiable (Statistics)

Civic coin production, 450-400 BC

Athens

Sicyon Ephesus . Sparta

Quantifiable (Statistics)

Monetary Unification, W. Asia Minor, 450-400 BC

c. 550-480 BC c. 480-400 BC c. 400-320 BC

Monetary unification in W. Asia Minor, 550-320 BC

Good News: it survives in huge quantities

Collection Approx No.

New York 200, 000

London 200, 000

Berlin 200, 000

Paris 200, 000

Vienna 100, 000

PAS 300, 000

Total 1 Million +

Bad News: it survives in huge quantities

• Over 20 collections of 20,000+ ancient coins

• At least 5 different national Fundmünzenschemes

• All catalogue in their own systems, with their own standards, in their own languages

• All are at different stages in their digital journeys

It gets worse…

• Many of the standard catalogues and corpora are more than 50 years old

• None of them exist digitally

• There is no international co-ordinating body for their creation

The Answer: Linked Data

1. Use URIs as names for things

2. Use HTTP URIs so that people can look up those names.

3. When someone looks up a URI, provide useful information, using the standards (RDF*, SPARQL)

4. Include links to other URIs. so that they can discover more things.

(1) and (2) Easy: HTTP URIs for things

Difficult: RDF

Nobody has created a vocabulary for coins:

E.g. How do we give URIs to concepts such as?

• ‘Minted in’

• ‘Has a die-axis of’

• ‘was struck under the authority of’

• ‘the mint of Antioch’

• ‘Vespasian striking as Caesar’

An attempt at an answer

Nomisma.org is a collaborative effort to provide stable digital representations of numismatic concepts and entities.

A mint for numismatic URIs

nomisma.org/id/mint

nomisma.org/id/denarius

nomisma.org/id/aspendus

Nomisma.org/id/

3. When someone looks up a URI, provide useful information

3. When someone looks up a URI, provide useful information

4. Include links to other URIs. so that they can discover more things

Hoards Finds

Corpora/Mint studies

Collections

Specimen

Specimen

Specimen

SpecimenSpecimen

Reference

Reference ReferenceReferenceReference

Identifiers already exist: Example 1. Coin Hoards

Identifiers already exist: Example 2. Types(Roman Imperial Coinage – RIC)

( )

RIC Hadrian 920

RIC Hadrian 920

RIC I (second edition) Augustus 4b →

http://numismatics.org/ocre/id/ric.1(2).aug.4b

ObjectType: nm:coinManufacture: nm:struckDenomination: nm:denariusMaterial: nm:arAuthority: nm:augustus

Etc.

Online Coins of the Roman Empire (OCRE)http://numismatics.org/ocre

Using SPARQL to Do Stuff

NomismaSPARQL endpoint: http://nomisma.org/sparql

(not yet open for business!)

<rdf:RDFxmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#" xmlns:dcterms="http://purl.org/dc/terms/" xmlns:skos="http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#" xmlns:nm="http://nomisma.org/id/"><nm:coinrdf:about="http://www.smb.museum/ikmk/object.php?id=18207926"><nm:type_series_itemrdf:resource="http://numismatics.org/ocre/id/ric.1(2).aug.1a"/><dcterms:titlexml:lang="de">Augustus, ca. 25-23 v. Chr.</dcterms:title><dcterms:identifier>18207926</dcterms:identifier><dcterms:publisher>MK Berlin</dcterms:publisher><nm:numismatic_termrdf:resource="http://nomisma.org/id/coin"/><nm:collection>MK Berlin</nm:collection><nm:axisrdf:datatype="xs:integer">6</nm:axis><nm:diameterrdf:datatype="xs:decimal">13</nm:diameter><nm:weightrdf:datatype="xs:decimal">1.32</nm:weight><nm:reverseReferencerdf:resource="http://www.smb.museum/mk_edit/images/8099/rs_opt.jpg"/><nm:obverseReferencerdf:resource="http://www.smb.museum/mk_edit/images/8099/vs_opt.jpg"/></nm:coin></rdf:RDF>

Ingesting RDF (coin)

<rdf:RDFxmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#" xmlns:dcterms="http://purl.org/dc/terms/" xmlns:skos="http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#" xmlns:nm="http://nomisma.org/id/"><nm:hoardrdf:about="http://admin.numismatics.org/chrr/id/ZAR"><dcterms:titlexml:lang="en">Zara (Italy; ZAR)</dcterms:title><dcterms:publisher>American Numismatic Society</dcterms:publisher><nm:findspotrdf:resource="http://www.geonames.org/6486176/"/><nm:closing_daterdf:datatype="xs:gYear">-0017</nm:closing_date><nm:type_series_itemrdf:resource="http://numismatics.org/ocre/id/ric.1(2).aug.4b"/></nm:hoard></rdf:RDF>

Ingesting RDF (hoard)

Aim: Associate other objects (coins, hoards) with coin types

NomismaRDF triplestore (Fuseki)

OCRE

APIs

Berlin

ANS

UVA

CHRR

Data

Nomisma