The Archaeological Excavation Report of Rigny: An Example of an Interoperable Logicist Publication

Abstract

The logicist program, which was initiated in the 1970s by J.C. Gardin, aims to clarify the reasoning processes in the field of archaeology and to explore new forms of publication, in order to overcome the growing imbalance between the flood of publications and our capacities of assimilation. The logicist program brings out the cognitive structure of archaeological constructs, which establishes a bridge between empirical facts or descriptive propositions, at one end of the argumentation, and interpretative propositions at the other. This alternative form of publication is designed to highlight the chain of inference and the evidence on which it stands. In the case of the logicist publication of the archaeological excavation in Rigny (Indre-et-Loire, France), our workflow can provide different levels of access to the content, allowing both speed-reading and in-depth consultation. Both the chains of inference and the ArSol database containing the field records that provide evidence for the initial propositions are visualized in a diagram structure. We rely on the International Committee for Documentation Conceptual Reference Model (CIDOC CRM) entities for ensuring the semantic interoperability of such publications within the Linked Open Data. Inference chains are mapped to CRMinf and ArSol records are mapped to CRM, CRMSci and CRMArcheo. Moreover, as part of the work carried out by the French Huma-Num MASA Consortium, a project is underway to allow the building of logicist publications starting from a graphical interface for describing the structure and content of propositions.

Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) and Archaeology: Old Tool, New Model

“…Emphasizing brevity and the clear definition of the structure behind archaeological reasoning, Gardin suggests schematization as a possible remedy. An example of a workflow based on the principles of the logicist programme can be found in Marlet et al (2019). This digital publication of the archaeological excavation of the settlement and church in Rigny (Indre-et-Loire, France) is complemented by work that maps the structure of the reasoning.…”

Values-Led Design Cards: Building Ethically Engaged Archaeology and Heritage Experiences

“…In contemporary practice, we add to this the assessment of the robustness of a project's implementation of its values framework. This task is complicated by the process of translating archaeological research into heritage narratives, where we may be reliant on different representational framework(s) and are constantly confronted with the affordances and constraints of the tools, devices and infrastructures which underpin our practice [26][27][28][29][30]. The work of making values visible and interrogable must therefore be done across a project's intellectual, ontological, and phygital (fully integrated physical and digital) components.…”

Paradata in Documentation Standards and Recommendations for Digital Archaeological Visualisations

“…As a form of processual information, (Agrifoglio, 2015) paradata can be difficult to capture and document. Proposed approaches range from writing free text narratives, producing annotations, developing virtual research environments and using information visualisation (Richards-Rissetto and von Schwerin, 2017), to 3D scholarly editions (Papadopoulos and Schreibman, 2019), video diaries (Hodder, 2000), written reports (de Kleijn et al, 2016) and formal modelling of intellectual and argumentative processes (Doerr and LeBoeuf, 2007;Marlet et al, 2019). At the same time, the digitalisation of archaeological practices has invigorated the earlier interest in standardisation and formal description of archaeological reasoning and workflows (e.g.…”

“…Many ontologies and documentation schemes (e.g. Aloia et al, 2017a;Henninger, 2018;Felicetti et al, 2013;Marlet et al, 2019) from different heritage-related disciplines has been mapped into CIDOC-CRM (Moraitou et al, 2018). The model has also been used as a basis for developing new ones (e.g.…”