Project scope

This work extends the outcomes of Dhi Qar Knowledge Base Project, a research project carried out between 2007-2008 by Epistematica, that proposed a new way to manage archaeological and epigraphic finds by using knowledge-driven cataloguing system. The project was developed by Carlo Matteo Scalzo [1] and Luca Severini [2].

The original knowledge base was released in 2008 as the instrument for cataloguing finds to be collected at the Nassiriya National Museum of IRAQ.

The presence of a knowledge base made possible to perform queries in order to facilitate the access to the catalogue. As an example, it will be possible to ask for all the scholastic tablets from a given period having circular shape. In the same way, it will be possible to ask for all the stamps having cylindrical shape and representing human figures.

The present work introduces the OWL (Web Ontology Language) ontology, which provides the fundamental vocabulary for this innovative cataloguing system.

The ontology is defined in OWL-DL, a version of the language recommended by the W3C for the Semantic Web, which permits automated reasoning. It has been designed using Protégé, an ontology editor developed by Stanford University (USA), that uses the services of Racer, the reasoner software developed by University of Lübeck, for automatic classification and validation.

This ontology is focused especially to describe inscribed finds from the Dhi Qar region (the Nassiriya district, in Iraq), such as tablets, rollers and envelops, which altogether allow for an accurate study of the seals. The ontology takes into account characteristics of the finds, which are relevant both from an archaeological point of view (shape, material, size and the other visual characteristics, etc.) and from an epigraphic perspective (motives, drawings, epigraphic dating, kind of written text, etc.).

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[1]	Master degree in Computer Engineering

[2]	Founder of Epistematica, holder of the research project