Vocabularies | EAGLE Portal

Classification is no easy issue in any field: epigraphy is no exception to this rule. Traditionally the CIL VI (Rome) classification has been used as a reference, as this typology has served as a model for all epigraphic production in the Roman Empire. There are nevertheless new glossaries and classification curated by CIL, which retain the limits of a formal classification, together with the benefits of this.

A digital vocabulary in a structured data format allows to be flexible, align data and harmonize content without forcing one or the other project or publication to change its mind about the structure used.

The EAGLE Vocabularies brought to you by the Working Group 1 – GIS and Terminologies of the EAGLE project which can be accessed here are a set of authority list and controlled vocabularies for the contents of some of the descriptive fields in the EAGLE Metadata Model.

They contain and align or relate to each other all the terms in use in the EAGLE BPN and a number of translations provided by the EpiDoc consortium and other partners of the project.

This vocabularies do not aim at being the “list of lists” neither at gathering concepts. The process through which these have been initially put together is that of bringing together terminologies used by curators of digital editions of inscriptions and put them in a format which would enable

• stable identifiers for each term
• relations between terms
• possibility of direct access, use and reuse from any third party or user.

All these vocabularies are aligned to the DAI vocabularies and to Getty ATT wherever possible.

We are about to start an alignment process of Decoration with LIMC France.

In a nearby future we hope also to align all vocabularies with Wikidata.

Please, help us to make this a useful resource for all by:

• providing definitions of terms
• providing definitions of concept
• suggesting relations between terms
• providing new translations

And do not forget to use the uris! And perhaps one day we will be able to do nice things as those Pelagios, Pleaiades and SNAP-DRGN do, also based on these vocabularies.