Thursday, April 30, 2020

Updates to Coin Hoards of the Roman Republic

With the impending launch of the new database of Greek Coin Hoards (derived from the 1973 publication, Inventory of Greek Coin Hoards), which will implement an updated findspot model that results in an RDF model more in line with ARIADNE's CIDOC-CRM recommendations, I have made some updates to Coin Hoards of the Roman Republic. Both hoard projects now export compatible Linked Open Data.

Instead of linking directly to a Geonames URL for the findspot (which can result in a collision of triples when aggregating content across collections that use the same gazetteer), the findspot is essentially reconceived as having been found within the boundaries of the gazetteer place, but is not that place itself.

Similar to a proposal I submitted to integrate the ARIADNE findspot data model into Linked Art, the new model extends nmo:hasFindspot from a direct gazetteer link to a node represented an nmo:Find (event), roughly equivalent to CRM sci:S19_Encounter_Event.


<http://numismatics.org/chrr/id/BAL>
  a nmo:Hoard, skos:Concept ;
  skos:prefLabel "Balanesti (Romania; BAL)"@en ;
  nmo:hasClosingDate "-0078"^^xsd:gYear ;
  nmo:hasFindspot [
    a nmo:Find ;
    crm:P7_took_place_at [
      a crm:E53_Place ;
      rdfs:label "Balanesti, Romania"@en ;
      crm:P89_falls_within <https://sws.geonames.org/685694/>
    ]
  ] ;
  dc:tableOfContents <http://numismatics.org/chrr/id/BAL#contents> ;
  void:inDataset <http://numismatics.org/chrr/> .

<https://sws.geonames.org/685694/>
  a crm:E53_Place ;
  rdfs:label "Bălăneşti (Romania)" ;
  crm:P2_has_type <http://vocab.getty.edu/aat/300008347> ;
  geo:location <https://sws.geonames.org/685694/#this> ;
  crm:P168_place_is_defined_by <https://sws.geonames.org/685694/#this> .

<https://sws.geonames.org/685694/#this>
  a geo:SpatialThing, crmgeo:SP5_Geometric_Place_Expression ;
  crmgeo:Q9_is_expressed_in_terms_of <http://www.wikidata.org/entity/Q215848> ;
  geo:lat 45.06667 ;
  geo:long 23.4 ;
  crmgeo:asWKT "POINT (23.4 45.06667)"^^http://www.opengis.net/ont/geosparql#wktLiteral .


The geographic coordinates are still linked/encoded with the W3C WGS ontology (geo:) to remain compatible with our practices elsewhere in the Nomisma data model, but also implemented crmgeo for encoding points and polygons as WKT, and designate the spatial node with both the geo:SpatialThing and crmgeo:SP5_Geometric_Place_Expression RDF classes.

In the process of developing a stylesheet to make some minor updates to the underlying NUDS Hoard XML model, I discovered numerous missing or inaccurate Geonames place references. Many of the missing places were cities in the former Yugoslavia, which did not match anything in the automated Geonames lookup we devised for this project back in late 2012/early 2013. Many of these places have mapped to modern cities in Slovenia, Croatia, other countries.


Improved coverage in the former Yugoslavia

Other corrected places may have been Romanian or Italian administrative divisions instead of the lower-level populated place. The Geonames place codes have been resolved to Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus terms, which have been reindexed into CHRR as a facet on the browse page.

Another area where a few gaps were filled came with Nomisma IDs for extraneous authorities that have only recently been created for IGCH, e.g., Juba I. With these authorities having been linked to Nomisma, the reindexing process has pulled the related dynasties and corporate entities related to these people and exposed them as new facets in the browse page.


Furthermore, since the coins of Juba I appear in more than a dozen Roman Republican coin hoards, these hoards now populate the geographic distribution in the map on his Nomisma page.

Distribution of Republican coin hoards including the coins of Juba I

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