EAMENA

A massive and open data information system for endangered archaeology and cultural heritage

Bill Finlayson, Bijan Rouhani, Thomas Huet*, Michael Fradley, Sayantani Neogi, Melisa Holloway & Andrew Wilson

The project

Endangered Archaeology in Middle East and North Africa

War
Agriculture
Construction
Natural

Destruction of the Temple of Bel by ISIS on August 23, 2015 (Palmyra, Syria)

Development of ploughed fields and orchards around and within an archaeological site (Udhma, Jordan)

Road over a section of an exposed church excavation (Ma’in, Jordan) ©APAAME .

The rising sea waters slowly washed away the Temple of Isis (Sabratha, Libya)

The database

is an open source semantic graph geoweb-based information platform for Cultural Heritage management

natively integrates the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CIDOC-CRM)

natively integrates the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI)¹

DCMI element	description
Title	A name given to the resource
Creator	An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Date	A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
Description	An account of the resource
…

4 of the 15 DCMI elements

natively integrates the Simple Knowledge Organisation System (SKOS)²

<skos:narrower>
  <skos:Concept rdf:about="http://localhost:8000/dd33ef4a-0f20-4b9a-9a73-f2ed5bbd11ff">
    <dcterms:identifier xml:lang="en-us">{"id": "c192f1f3-afdd-4b7c-af14-36795c1865a8", "value": "http://localhost:8000/dd33ef4a-0f20-4b9a-9a73-f2ed5bbd11ff"}</dcterms:identifier>
    <skos:narrower rdf:resource="http://localhost:8000/17014583-8f0c-4962-972c-2dc8c9c9f014"/>
    <skos:narrower rdf:resource="http://localhost:8000/703e2ec7-705e-449d-8cc2-df40273f1417"/>
    <skos:narrower rdf:resource="http://localhost:8000/b4328a1f-1fde-4c78-aaf5-d2dbac673e4f"/>
    <skos:prefLabel xml:lang="en-us">{"id": "c8da8720-4c3e-4441-8669-6567eea99cd4", "value": "Islamic (Iran)"}</skos:prefLabel>
...

🔗 link

natively integrates the Sparse Query Language (SPARQL)³

  prefix rdf:     <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#>
  prefix skos:    <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#>
  prefix dcterms: <http://purl.org/dc/terms/>

  select ?id ?name
  where {
  ?concept skos:prefLabel ?name ;
           dcterms:identifier ?id .
  FILTER (lang(?name) = 'en-us')

natively integrates the Extended Date/Time Format (EDTF)⁴

EDTF data collected on 19 archaeological sites in NW Syria between 2004 and 2019 (63 events)

🔗 link

natively integrates the World Geodetic System 1984 (WGS84)⁵

EAMENA report (detail) of Qasr al-Hallabat Umayyad castle
(Zarqa, Jordan)

integrates 3^rd part apps like the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF)⁶

EAMENA IIIF node (in test) of Qasr al-Hallabat Umayyad castle
(Zarqa, Jordan)

Arches IT Stack

Full-stack
AWS
Postgres
Python/Django
Elastic
Apache
UI

EAMENA is an (v5) instance

Cultural Protection Fund (CPF) training in Amman (Jordan), December 2021

EAMENA is hosted on (Ubuntu)

EAMENA uses Data Base Management System.

EAMENA uses a Web Application Framework.

EAMENA uses an distributed search

EAMENA uses an HTTP server

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin ash.smith@soton.ac.uk
    DocumentRoot /opt/arches/eamena
    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !on
    RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]
    Alias /static /opt/arches/eamena/eamena/static/
    Alias /media /opt/arches/media
    <Directory /opt/arches/eamena/eamena/static>
        Require all granted
    </Directory>
    <Directory /opt/arches/media>
        Require all granted
    </Directory>
    <Directory /opt/arches/eamena>
        <Files wsgi.py>
            Require all granted
        </Files>
    </Directory>
    ProxyPreserveHost On
    ProxyPass "/geoserver" "http://54.155.109.226:8080/geoserver/"
    ProxyPassReverse "/geoserver" "http://54.155.109.226:8080/geoserver/"
    WSGIDaemonProcess eamena user=arches python-path=/opt/arches/eamena python-home=/opt/arches/ENV
    WSGIProcessGroup eamena
    WSGIScriptAlias / /opt/arches/eamena/eamena/wsgi.py
    WSGIPassAuthorization on
</VirtualHost>

EAMENA User Interface

Arches-based projects

Listed projects

Global South

Historic England

General view of Stonehenge (Wiltshire, England) © Historic England J940231

Research

New Findings

Fradley, M., Simi, F., & Guagnin, M. (2022) 🔗 link

Globalkites ANR funded project interactive map screenshot 🔗 link

Analysing

eamenar::geojson_map_path()

eamenar::geojson_map_path(export.type = "profile")

Database Issues & Developments

Issues

Coordinates & Looting
Institutional Actors
Data & API Sovereignty
Data & API Sustainibility

Looting of the Assyrian site of Yasin Tepe (Sulaymaniyah, Iraq)

“Protection of Syria’s Cultural Heritage in Times of Armed Conflict” e-learning course for Syrian cultural heritage professionals (ICOMOS - ICCROM)

Middle East Geodatabase for Antiquities Jordan (MEGA Jordan), created in 2011http://megajordan.org/

Jordan Masdar (Arches v5), created in 2021http://34.240.60.23/

XXX (Arches v7), to be created in 2023

&
Collaborate =	Sharing	and	Versioning

https://github.com/achp-project

project name	project url	GitHub repository	GitHub member names
CAAL	https://uclcaal.org	https://github.com/achp-project/prj-caal	@mnebbia, @BAPAlveyCHIC
EAMENA	http://eamena.arch.ox.ac.uk	https://github.com/achp-project/prj-eamena-marea	@zoometh
MaESAM	https://maeasam.org		@razekmh, @manojlokare
MAHSA	https://www.mahsa.arch.cam.ac.uk		@junaidjabbar01
MAPHSA	https://www.upf.edu/web/maphsa		@jgregoriods
MAPSS	https://mapss.shh.mpg.de/info	https://github.com/achp-project/prj-mapss	@michaeltfisher
MaREA	https://marea.soton.ac.uk	https://github.com/achp-project/prj-eamena-marea	@ads04r

Developments

Software
Project

EAMENA v4 (

v7)

Internationalization (مرحبًا, bonjour, ہیلو, …), multi-language data import/export
3, 14, 8, …

Internationalization of the EAMENA database - Arabic

Conclusion

Aknowledgments & Contact

Arcadia Fund, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing & Peter Baldwin

British Council Cultural Protection Fund

EAMENA Project: https://github.com/eamena-project + https://github.com/archesproject, http://eamena.arch.ox.ac.uk/
Partners: https://www.arch.ox.ac.uk/, https://le.ac.uk/study/archaeology-ancient-history, https://www.durham.ac.uk/departments/academic/archaeology/, http://www.apaame.org/

Footnotes

ISO 15836
ISO 25964-1
ISO/IEC 9075-15
ISO 8601-2
ISO 19111
ISO 21127