Abstract :
[en] Grounded on archaeological information modeling works undertaken at the Geomatics Unit of the University of Liege, this paper goes a step further in handling time and function imperfection, interpretative sequences and people interacting with historical objects.
Designed in 2011, the initial model already gathered both geometrical and historical information. It was partially based on the urban data standard City GML mainly for interoperability purposes. Its specificity, the version concept, allowed multiple geometries experiments. That property enabled us to handle geometrical ambiguity and incompleteness. To validate this model, and in a showcase purpose, a first prototype has been realized. One year later this prototype’s model has been improved to manage in a better way all objects’ versions and possible representations. Until now, this model integrates and manages imperfect archaeological data but only partially: the version concept being only dedicated to express geometric ambiguity or imprecision. Henceforth, with the version notion widening, we propose to encompass function and time imperfection as well. It is an important progress because on an archaeological point of view, time and function are quite generally incomplete, uncertain, imprecise or contradictory. Another enhancement must be highlighted: the agent enlistment. Historical characters, on one hand, and contemporaneous people (like authors, archaeologists etc.) on another hand are key elements of archaeological game pieces. Finally, we will describe the way of structuring versions into interpretative sequences.
With those improvements, we wish to carry on feeding the scientific debate as much as drafting Archaeological Information Systems.
