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

Area of Science:

• Archaeology
• Digital Humanities
• Cultural Heritage

Background:

• The Côa Valley Archaeological Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site, contains over 1,200 Paleolithic engraved rocks.
• Crucial data on these engravings is currently held in a restricted, proprietary database (2ArchIS) at the University of Minho.

Purpose of the Study:

• To transition restricted archaeological data into an openly accessible Linked Open Data (LOD) format.
• To enhance the accessibility and research potential of Paleolithic art data for the global scientific community.

Main Methods:

• Data transformation from the 2ArchIS database into RDF using OpenRefine.
• Development of standards-based artifacts: Dublin Core Tabular Application Profile (DCTAP), RDF Schema (RDFS) vocabulary, Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) controlled vocabulary, and Shape Expressions (ShEx) schema.
• Validation of transformed data against the ShEx schema and hosting on a triplestore.

Main Results:

• A complete Linked Open Data (LOD) dataset of the Vale do Côa engravings has been successfully generated and made openly available.
• All developmental artifacts, including DCTAP, RDFS, SKOS, and ShEx schema, are openly accessible for scientific use and reuse.

Conclusions:

• The initiative significantly broadens access to vital Paleolithic art data by publishing it as LOD, thereby enhancing its research potential.
• Future work will focus on developing a user-friendly interface for non-technical users to query the data.