JISC

Overview

Archaeologists routinely create vast quantities of primary digital data, in a rich variety of formats, as the primary record of fieldwork it is essential that these data are preserved. The Archaeology Data Service (ADS) is a national repository for digital data from the UK historic environment sector. In the USA the Digital Antiquity initiative hosts a digital repository (tDAR). TAG will develop tools for cross-searching and semantic interoperability between ADS and tDAR. This will provide a sustainable service for archaeological teaching, learning and research across two continents and provide an exemplar for cyber-infrastructure partnerships across all subject areas.

Aims and objectives

The TAG project will develop an infrastructure to bring together and enhance digital content in the USA and England/Wales. Building on existing ADS web services registries covering the historic environment sector in Europe, TAG will extend these for North American usage. A web services application will then be developed to create a standards-compliant cross-search facility for metadata records held by ADS and tDAR covering the archaeology of England and the United States. In a second stage a deeper web services cross-search facility will be developed for faunal remains to enable deep data mining and a valuable research tool for archaeologists.

Project methodology

It is proposed to develop interoperability between the USA and UK at two levels. The first stage will be to create infrastructure to enable basic cross-search of Dublin Core compatible metadata records for digital resources covering the archaeology of the USA and UK. The second stage will attempt to develop a much deeper and richer level of cross-searching for faunal data from North America and Europe. This sub-discipline has been chosen as there is a relatively high level of agreement over basic classifications; the provision of deep data mining would be truly ground-breaking.

Anticipated outputs and outcomes

The first deliverable will be the TAG web services registry, the second will be the TAG user interface and the third deliverable will be the faunal remains database cross-search interface, which will be ready for user evaluation by 31 December 2010. A faunal remains workshop will be held in York which will be used to define user needs and evaluation of the proposed t-Model. A wide cross-section of representation from faunal remains specialists, up to 20 participants will be invited from the UK and the US.

Technology / Standards used

The ADS implementation of qualified Dublin Core and the MIDAS-XML standard for sites and monuments records is mapped to the ISO standard CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CIDOC-CRM). Although MIDAS originated within the UK it is now being adopted by several other European countries. The tDAR environment consists of digital repository services based on the OAIS reference model project and resource-level metadata can be disseminated in OAI-compliant Dublin Core as well as the MODS metadata framework Web services to be implemented by the project will be exposed via the Web Services Description Language (WSDL) and the SOAP messaging framework.