Dear Robert,

A quick note on the E34 Inscription class, following Franco’s considerations 
(and thanks to him for pulling me in :-))

Some time ago, in a paper illustrating a possible CIDOC CRM application to the 
epigraphic world, we started investigating the degree of applicability of E34 
to the semantic description of an epigraph. Very soon we discovered that:

1. the scope notes of the E34 class state that it “comprises recognisable, 
short texts attached to instances of E24 Physical Man-Made Thing”; from an 
epigraphic perspective, although many inscriptions bear short texts, the 
brevity or length of an inscription is not among its main characteristics. In 
fact, there are inscriptions occupying entire walls (the Gortyn Law Code or the 
Res Gestae Divi Augusti, for example) and in any case the “short text” of the 
E34 class remained too vague and undefined for the purposes of our 
investigation.

2. as it is currently defined within the CIDOC CRM, E34 class belongs to the 
“conceptual objects” entities, which in turn are defined as “non-material 
products of our minds and other human produced data” something that does not 
takes into any account the “materiality” of an epigraph, a fundamental and 
essential component of its identity. 

During the investigation and study of an epigraph, scholars typically move from 
the analysis of its physical features before getting to their archaeological, 
palaeographic, linguistic and historical meaning. In particular, an inscription 
defined only as a conceptual object, does not seem to fully capture the very 
nature of an epigraph, consisting of a physical part as well as of the 
conceptual component the E34 class points to. The etymology of the word 
“epigraph” itself (i.e.: “written on something”) seems to suggest such 
inextricable relation. In all these aspects, an inscription presents an 
immediate resemblance to the E25 Man-Made Feature class of the core model. The 
conceptual object is also present, but it is something referred by the 
inscription, not the inscription itself: this relation(s) could be further 
detailed by using specific properties. In our paper we have tried to outline 
this issue by also proposing the modification of the E34 class in the core 
model itself.

You could read the rest of the story in the paper, if you like, just following 
this link:

http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1656/paper5.pdf <http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1656/paper5.pdf>

This paper laid the groundwork for the development of the extension for ancient 
texts we are currently working on. 
Indeed, we have further expanded the idea of a text being something halfway 
between the physical and the conceptual world and created new classes that 
could be used to describe a huge variety of written texts, not only epigraphic 
inscriptions. But this is another story. Which, by the way, you can read here 
:-)
 
http://vast-lab.org/publications/scripta_manent.pdf 
<http://vast-lab.org/publications/scripta_manent.pdf>

I hope this helps.

Bests,
Achille

> Il giorno 21 giu 2017, alle ore 20:33, Robert Sanderson 
> <rsander...@getty.edu> ha scritto:
> 
> 
> Thank you, Franco.
> 
> I completely agree with your assessment here.  The concern with the current 
> model, of course, is that E34 Inscription is a subclass of E33 Linguistic 
> Object (along with E37 Mark) meaning that every Inscription is also a 
> Linguistic Object.  For your examples, before the content can be ascertained 
> to actually have linguistic content, I would imagine them to be only E36 
> Visual Items.  I’ll update the analysis with this clarification. 
> 
> And also, for clarity about the scope, this work does not take into account 
> any of the extensions to CRM, only the core model as expressed in RDF.
> 
> Thank you again! :)
> 
> Rob 
> 
> On 6/21/17, 11:25 AM, "Franco Niccolucci" <franco.niccolu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>    Dear Robert
> 
>    I had a look at the page. Interesting, at first sight I agree with most of 
> the statements there, but it will require more attention to comment. Anyway, 
> there’s one thing I can say now.
> 
>    I think that the analysis of E34 Inscription is a bit superficial. An 
> inscription, as epigraphists know well, has several dimensions and the 
> proposed use of E33 captures only the text one. Instead, it is important also 
> to consider the graphic component and the material one.
> 
>    Example 1: the Phaistos disk has an as yet undeciphered linguistic content 
> - we could imagine that the creators made bizarre figures just to puzzle 
> future archaeologists: it actually could not be a linguistic object, and I 
> would be scared to define it only this way.
> 
>    Example 2: in the Sherlock Holmes novel “The adventure of the Dancing Men” 
> in the collection “The Return of Sherlock Holmes" the paper messages are 
> inscriptions on paper. They become linguistic objects only when deciphered by 
> the Consulting Detective - if you don’t know the story you may wish to read 
> it.
> 
>    My colleague Achille Felicetti has developed a CRM extension for epigraphy 
> which aims to manage all these aspects and he may wish to explain better than 
> me how they propose to do it, or refer to a paper where he has detailed the 
> whole model. 
> 
>    More to follow on other 
> 
>    Best,
> 
>    Franco
> 
>    Prof. Franco Niccolucci
>    Director, VAST-LAB
>    PIN - U. of Florence
>    Scientific Coordinator
>    ARIADNE - PARTHENOS
> 
>    Piazza Ciardi 25
>    59100 Prato, Italy
> 
> 
>> Il giorno 21 giu 2017, alle ore 18:19, Robert Sanderson 
>> <rsander...@getty.edu> ha scritto:
>> 
>> 
>> Hi Philip,
>> 
>> Indeed,  _all_ of the subclasses of E41 other than E42 should probably be 
>> deprecated.  They add nothing new, semantically, compared to Appellation. 
>> Also the subclasses of E13 … (E14-E17) are overly specific, and 
>> insufficient. There’s no Assignment for Appellations, for example, yet 
>> naming things occurs all the time.
>> 
>> Even if they’re not officially deprecated, organizations actually producing 
>> data should simply not use them. 
>> 
>> For interest’s sake, our analysis of which classes in the CRM are useful: 
>>   http://linked.art/model/profile/class_analysis.html
>> 
>> Rob
>> 
>> On 6/21/17, 3:12 AM, "Crm-sig on behalf of Carlisle, Philip" 
>> <crm-sig-boun...@ics.forth.gr on behalf of 
>> philip.carli...@historicengland.org.uk> wrote:
>> 
>>   Hi all,
>>   I’m currently creating new resource models for the Arches project and 
>> looking at Actors.
>> 
>>   Since E82 has been deprecated in favour of E41 then surely P131 should 
>> also be deprecated along with the text in the introduction which refers to 
>> these in CRM Compatibility of
>>    Information Systems paragraph 3 – “Note that there is no minimum 
>> requirement for the classes and properties that must be present in the 
>> exported user data. Therefore it is possible that the
>>    data may pertain to instances of just a single property, such as E21 
>> Person. 
>>   P131 is identified by: E82 Actor Appellation.”.
>> 
>>   Plus the references in the Property hierarchy and the entries for P1 and 
>> E39
>> 
>>   Phil
>> 
>>   Phil Carlisle
>>   Knowledge Organization Specialist
>>   Listing Group, Historic England
>>   Direct Dial: +44 (0)1793 414824
>> 
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>> 
>> 
>> 
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