Vale do Côa rock art as linked open data: Application profile, schemas, and data

The Côa Valley Archaeological Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site and the world's most extensive example of open-air Paleolithic art, holds crucial data on its over 1,200 engraved rocks in the University of Minho's proprietary 2ArchIS database. This article addresses the need to transition this restricted information into an openly accessible format to benefit the broader scientific community.

The work involved transforming the 2ArchIS data into Linked Open Data (LOD). This process began with analyzing the existing data model and content. Subsequently, a series of standards-based artifacts were developed: a Dublin Core Tabular Application Profile (DCTAP), a Resource Description Framework (RDF) Schema (RDFS) vocabulary, a Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) controlled vocabulary, and a Shape Expressions (ShEx) schema for data validation. The data exported from 2ArchIS was transformed into RDF using OpenRefine, validated against the ShEx schema, and finally hosted on a triplestore.

The project successfully generated a complete LOD dataset of the Vale do Côa engravings that is openly available. All resulting developmental artifacts, the DCTAP, RDFS and SKOS vocabularies, and the ShEx schema, are openly available for the scientific community's use and reuse.

This initiative has significantly broadened access to vital Paleolithic art data by publishing it as Linked Open Data, thereby enhancing its research potential. Future efforts will include creating a user-friendly interface to help non-technical users query the triplestore.