LEIZA conservation thesaurus and ontology

The Specialist Thesaurus comprises a many German and English terms that are relevant for the condition assessment and description of conservation and restoration measures of archaeological cultural assets. This also includes the names of the required materials and tools as well as the descriptive terms for technological evaluations with regard to the production technique and use of the objects.

This thesaurus is a comprehensive collection of the terminology used in practice to describe the conservation and restoration processes carried out, as used in the “Restoration, Conservation and Material Analysis” competence area at the Leibniz Centre for Archaeology (LEIZA). The structure of the thesaurus is organized hierarchically and includes preferred terms, alternative synonyms, short definitions and their sources, based on a SKOS scheme extended by subject-specific requirements. This facilitates navigation and targeted access to relevant information. In addition, the thesaurus has semantic links to important reference thesauri and authority files, including the Gemeinsame Normdatei (GND), the Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT), Wikidata and others.

These links promote interoperability and data exchange between different systems and institutions and thus strengthen research work in the field of archaeological conservation and restoration. The thesaurus is made available as a web-based service within the framework of NFDI4Objects. By providing the thesaurus as an online resource under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY-4.0) license, its use and further development is promoted. This enables national and international experts to access the terminology, use it in their work and adapt it to new findings and needs.