# The Digital Archaeological Workflow: A Case Study from Sweden The Digital Archaeological Workflow (DAP) is a programme of work being carried out at the Information Development Unit at the Swedish National Heritage Board, in partnership with the major Swedish archaeological stakeholders. The programme aims to streamline the flow of archaeological data (and its associated metadata) between different actors in the Swedish archaeological process, and to ensure that this data is preserved in a sustainable and accessible manner. It aims to address a number of problems which have hampered the practice of archaeology in Sweden for some time, but which have now started to become more acute as digital technology saturates the processes involved. There is no centralised register of archaeological fieldwork in Sweden, making it difficult not only to keep track of what is going on where, but also to know what fieldwork – if any – has taken place in connection to a particular site in the national sites and monuments record. Sweden also has no central digital archive for the storage of either archaeological fieldwork data or reports; as such records are now produced digitally, valuable archaeological data is thus increasingly at risk of being lost. Furthermore, despite the fact that almost all of the data and administrative metadata surrounding archaeological work are digital-born, they are still handled according to analogue paradigms, particularly when information must be shared between different organisations. Sources of archaeological data which are currently made available digitally by various national and local bodies are not typically linked together. This leads to inefficiencies in information transfer, duplication of data and effort, and to information describing the same 'objects' being stored in different systems within different organisations. The DAP programme intends to address these problems over the course of a five-year period, using standardised platform-agnostic data formats and protocols to streamline information transfer between organisations, by releasing a series of open taxonomies and ontologies for common Swedish archaeological terms and concepts on the semantic web in order to facilitate data interoperability, and by creating a secure digital repository both for the raw data and reports arising from fieldwork and research. We aim to make this information freely available as linked open data. Our overall mapping of the current Swedish archaeological process is complete (although some details remain) and we are currently working on a conceptual model on which our future information architecture will be based. In parallell, we are also working to translate and release our existing (analogue) archaeological taxonomies to SKOS and release them as linked open data authorities, beginning with the Swedish monuments types thesaurus.

1. The Digital Archaeological Workflow:
A Case Study from Sweden
Marcus Smith
marcus.smith@raa.se
CAA 2014 – Paris

2. The Problem
• No central fieldwork
register

3. ’Charles Babb parts storage’ – SDASM (flickr)
The Problem
• No central fieldwork
register
• No central digital
archive for
archaeological data

4. The Problem
• No central fieldwork
register
• No central digital
archive for
archaeological data
• Digital availability of
fieldwork reports is
patchy

5. The Problem
• No central fieldwork
register
• No central digital
archive for
archaeological data
• Digital availability of
fieldwork reports is
patchy
• Existing resources not
linked
’silos’ – Doc Searls (flickr)

6. The Problem
• No central fieldwork
register
• No central digital
archive for
archaeological data
• Digital availability of
fieldwork reports is
patchy
• Existing resources not
linked
• Inefficient information
transfer
(digital → paper → digital)
How It Works – The Computer.
The Output Unit. (Ladybird books)

7. Goals for DAP
• Fully digitised seamless
information transfer

8. ’CERN storage servers’ – skimaniac (flickr)
Goals for DAP
• Fully digitised seamless
information transfer
• Digital archive for
archaeological data

9. Goals for DAP
• Fully digitised seamless
information transfer
• Digital archive for
archaeological data
• Access to source data

10. Goals for DAP
• Fully digitised seamless
information transfer
• Digital archive for
archaeological data
• Access to source data
• Semantically linked
data
’Anchor Men of the Mauretania’
Tyne and Wear Archives and Museums (flickr)

11. ’Come in We’re Open’ – jilleatsapples (flickr)
Goals for DAP
• Fully digitised seamless
information transfer
• Digital archive for
archaeological data
• Access to source data
• Semantically linked
data
• Openly licensed, re-
useable data
• National ‘events’
register

12. DAP so far…
• Government directive, with extra funding for five years
• LOD as a core idea; openness and transparency as core
values
• Collaborative effort with the archaeological community
• DAP requires a new data infrastructure for us at RAÄ
• DAP requires a new way of working for archaeologists in
Sweden:
– Technical challenges
– Licensing challenges
– Mindset challenges

13. DAP so far…
• Already in place:
– SAMLA reports/PDF
repository:
http://samla.raa.se/
– Processes mapped
– Conceptual modeling
ongoing

14. DAP so far…
• Already in place:
– SAMLA reports/PDF
repository:
http://samla.raa.se/
– Processes mapped
– Conceptual modeling
ongoing

16. DAP so far…
• Already in place:
– SAMLA reports/PDF
repository:
http://samla.raa.se/
– Processes mapped
– Conceptual modeling
ongoing

18. Actor/Role
Organisation
Organisation
Legal
framework
Legal
framework
Legalframework
Archaeological
event
Method
Analysis
Fieldwork
Documentation
Resolution
Documentation
Development
Research
event
Actor
/
Role
Assessment event
Legal
status
Monument
type
Period
Information
management event
Land
management
event
Legal
event
Natural
event
Tangible
Heritage
Temporal
Context
Geographical
Context
Event
Context
Operative
Context

19. DAP so far…
• Already in place:
– SAMLA reports/PDF
repository:
http://samla.raa.se/
– Processes mapped
– Conceptual modeling
ongoing
• Still to plan:
– protocols & formats
– data mapping
– digital archive…
• To do straight away:
– rescue fieldwork data
– start a skeleton of an
events register
– …and ‘master data’
such as ontologies,
thesauri/controlled
vocabularies!

20. SOCH
Swedish Open Cultural Heritage
• K-samsök –
‘Cultural Cross-Search’
http://www.ksamsok.se/

21. SOCH
Swedish Open Cultural Heritage
• K-samsök –
‘Cultural Cross-Search’
http://www.ksamsok.se/
• Metadata aggregator &
web service for cultural
heritage institutions
• Monuments, buildings,
museum collections…

22. SOCH
Swedish Open Cultural Heritage
• K-samsök –
‘Cultural Cross-Search’
http://www.ksamsok.se/
• Metadata aggregator &
web service for cultural
heritage institutions
• Monuments, buildings,
museum collections…
• 40 institutions
(≈25–30 million triples)

23. (≈25–30 million triples)
• 2.1 million artefacts
• 880 thousand photographs
• 830 thousand monuments
• 440 thousand documents
• 110 thousand historic buildings
• 40 thousand personages
• 2000 historical events
• 1500 historic maps
SOCH
Swedish Open Cultural Heritage
• K-samsök –
‘Cultural Cross-Search’
http://www.ksamsok.se/
• Metadata aggregator &
web service for cultural
heritage institutions
• Monuments, buildings,
museum collections…
• 40 institutions
• 4.7 million database
objects

24. Structured Vocabularies
• SOCH publishes LOD…
• …but the majority of the
classification metadata is
still text strings, rather than
URIs pointing to terms in
authoritative controlled
vocabularies
• We’re going to need a
number of such thesauri in
for the data a future DAP
infrastructure is going to
handle
• Perhaps even a full-blown
ontology for Swedish
archaeology…?
• Monuments types
• Legal status
• Events
• Periods
• Materials
• Built heritage
• Evidence types
• Techniques
• Artefact types
• …etc
• Extant/non-existent
• Internal/external

25. Structured Vocabularies
• SKOS: Simple Knowledge Organisation System – an RDF
application for structured vocabularies
(also RDFS, OWL…)
• Initial idea: create SKOS versions of our vocabularies and put them
out on the web. (Like SENESCHAL http://www.heritagedata.org/)
• But now: Need a proper system for managing these terms and
publishing them in different ways: one central system for storing and
managing the data, which can be consumed by a variety of systems
(both internal and external) in a variety of formats. Of which SKOS
would be one.
• Investigate user-needs: not many use SKOS today… but may do
later.

26. Who manages what data?
• Local authorities: resolutions
• Fieldwork units: field
documentation; produce reports
• National Heritage Board:
national monuments register,
buildings register, monuments
types thesaurus, etc; archive
reports
• Forest Agency: forest sites
• Museums: finds
• Universities, SND: research
data, analyses
• National Land Survey:
geospatial data
• Law: legal terms/concepts, legal
events
• We need to be able to
manage the data
we're responsible for
• We need to be able to
connect to (fetch)
data that external
bodies are
responsible for, and
react when they
change

27. Challenges
• Ongoing DAP project to deliver a set of recommendations on how
we should manage the structure and mapping of our master data
taxonomies: practical protocols/praxis, and tools.
• Versioning and preservation
• We welcome suggestions and feedback - we're very much finding
our way as we go!
• DAP is a massive undertaking, and we don’t want to reinvent the
wheel if we can help it.

28. DAP
SOCH
http://www.raa.se/dap
http://www.ksamsok.se/
http://www.kringla.nu/
marcus.smith@raa.se
@carwash