Project facts

Duration: 08-01-2018 - 31-12-2020
Project coordinator: University of Oxford, Oxford (UK)
Project consortium: University of Oxford, Oxford (UK); University of Valencia (UVEG), Valencia (SPAIN); Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris (FRANCE).
Funding bodies: JPI CH
Subject areas: Archives, Collections, Digital Heritage, Digitization, History, Materials, Methods - Procedures, Objects, Tangible Heritage, Technologies - Scientific processes

Presentation

The ARCH project has used Linked Open Data technology to establish an overarching platform for the study, curation, archiving and preservation of the monetary heritage of the ancient world.

Using the nomusma.org knowledge organisation system, it has created a framework consisting at the highest level of a single, unified portal across multiple online typological resources.

These resources have been, in turn, linked to a body of data drawn from two major European collections, as well as a large corpus of material drawn from commercial contexts (auction catalogues).

The overarching portal is now used as a central point of access to this data for multiple audiences, as well as a demonstration of the extensibility of this approach to other geographic areas. Associate Partner-projects based in Germany and in the United States have contributed typologies for this purpose.

As a proof of concept of the research applicability of this framework, ARCH has developed one geographical focus - Pre-Roman Spain and southern Gaul - in the form of a specific online reference tool that has drawn upon both categories of data (public collections and objects in commerce), as well as a program of research designed to exploit the opportunities offered by such a systemic and Linked Open Data infrastructure.

The project has examined the questions of monetary and cultural connectivity and interaction across the borders of Spain and France in antiquity, in collaboration with leading scholars in the field of its geographical area, and monetary and cultural history, working as Associated Partners based in Paris, Orléans, and Valencia.

 

Banner: Silver coins hoard from around 1700, England - U.K. at the British Museum. Half crowns of Charles I, shillings of James I and sixpences of Elisabeth I.