An initiative dedicated to further the standardisation of metadata entities and associated vocabularies in cuneiform studies.
View the Project on GitHub cdli-gh/glow_vocabularies
Geography Working Group
Rune Rattenborg, Sebastian Borkowski, Manuel Molina, Jamie Novotny, Susanne Rutishauser
The place entity defines any discrete, historical place. A place, as understood in the present context is a historical and conceptual entity, separate from a location, which is a geographical entity, and a name, which is a linguistic entity. The majority of digital text catalogues in cuneiform studies currently maintain historical places, archaeological proveniences, and their names in a single table, but this practice conflates the above entities within a single dimension.
The basis for conceptually separating a historical place and its physical location lies with the uncertainty and fuzziness of historical geographical information. A place may be known through a name, or through an archaeological location. Maintaining place, name, and location as separate entities within a relational data structure allows for the association of one place with none, one, or more than one location or none, one, or more than one name. It also allows for the qualification of associations between each of these entities with separate levels of relational certainty.
The place entity as understood in the present context is largely identical to the place entity type employed by the Pleiades: A Gazetteer of Past Places repository. Within this data ontology, a place is an entirely abstract, conceptual entity, that can exist in name only (as a place mentioned in an inscription) or in location only (as the archaeological site of an ancient place without a name). Since connections between places are an integral part of the Pleiades ontology, a place can then be located relative to another place, without necessitating a geographical location.
The stable URI format for place records in Pleiades are described in more detail in the Pleiades documentation. Here, place URIs act as a parent identifier to related name, location, and connection records.
In the Wikidata ontology, a place appears related to a range of different item types, depending on the nature of the particular record. Next to a dedicated item record for the specific place, a place may then be an instance of e.g. Q15661340 ancient city, Q486972 human settlement, or any type more specific to the exact character of the historical place in question.
As an abstract, conceptual entity, a place will typically be defined either through its association with a name or a location, or both. When having a known association with a geographical location, a place can usually be linked to an external identifier conflating place and location without any problems.
| name | description |
|---|---|
| cdli_id | Identifier of the related provenience entity record in the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative |
| pleiades_id | Identifier of the corresponding entity record in Pleiades |
| wikidata | Identifier of the corresponding entity record in WikiData |
Additional links predominantly include identifiers from historical and geographical gazetteers, depending again on whether the association between a place and a location is known or not known. name | description —–|————— whg | Identifier of the corresponding entity record in World History Gazetteer