Transforming Archaeological Data Practice

Computing research conducted at the University of South Wales (USW) has investigated how knowledge organization systems can help to overcome the semantic interoperability problems within digital heritage that result in a lack of meaningful connection between datasets; searches overlook relevant material or return false matches.  

Nationally, this research led to a major enhancement to quality of service (improved search and data entry) in the redeveloped OASIS (Online Access to the Index of Archaeological Investigations), the online database for UK archaeologists and heritage practitioners.  

Internationally, USW proposed a central spine vocabulary for European archaeological infrastructure and developed open source mapping tools, templates and guidelines. This resulted in a multilingual concept based semantic search capability, opening access to non-English language resources, for the major European archaeological data centres and the broader archaeological community.