Wikidata:Property proposal/type of archaeological site

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type of archaeological site[edit]

Originally proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Generic

   Not done
Descriptiontype of archaeological sites
Representsarchaeological site (Q839954)
Data typeItem
DomainArchaeological sites like Q12907041 and Q20568298
Example 1Q20566506 → human settlement (Q486972)
Example 2Q12911618 → religious object (Q12910132), necropolis (Q200141)
Example 3Q20570108 → hillfort (Q744099)
Example 4Q12905665 → hoard (Q164099)
SourceThe lists of archaeological sites in Macedonia are contained in this template.
Planned useI plan to use this property to add statement on the type(s) of the archaeological sites (e.g. human settlement (Q486972), religious object (Q12910132), hoard (Q164099) etc.) in Macedonia. My first idea was to add the data with instance of (P31) along with archaeological site (Q839954) but this would be inappropriate because these are, in fact, types of archaeological site (Q839954).
Number of IDs in source4,000+
See alsotime period (P2348) (for historical record)

Побуда[edit]

I proposed the creation of this property in order to store more data in a neat way. Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 13:11, 14 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion[edit]

  • How is this relationship called in archaeological research? ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 21:34, 17 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Comment I wonder whether the correct modelling would be "item 1" -> site of -> "item 2" where "item 1" describes the archaeological site while item 2 describes the historic reality (eg a settlement, hillfort etc). Thus there should probably be two items for each site: one to describe the dig happening in the present (or multiple digs) and one for the initial historic occurence? So maybe instead of "type" we need something that describes the relationship "site of" ? --Hannes Röst (talk) 01:00, 18 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
That seems superior to me, as you likely want to store further information about the site in many cases like the time when the human settlement was active and it's population. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 13:03, 18 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The information about the period from which the site dates back is stored using time period (P2348). However, the use of a property like "site of" might work well because the ultimate point is to store data on the subclasses of archaeological site (Q839954).--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 06:30, 19 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
That's not what time period (P2348) is defined to do. It's about the timeframe in which the subject (which is the archaeological site) exists. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 15:17, 24 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
ChristianKl I don't see how does your reasoning relate to this property proposal. An archaeological site is usually not part of any larger settlement but a place where archaeological artifacts have been found or unearthed. That place may be located in someone's private property (e.g. field, yard) or on a state-owned land (e.g. mountain, cave). In its broadest sense, there are several dozens of archaeological types from coinage and utensils to aqueducts and ancient cities, which are used as a standardised typology to describe the archaeological sites in the Archaeological map of the Republic of Macedonia published by the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts. The aim of this proposal is to create a property similar to instance of (P31) that will have to avoid an overuse of it in a specific context. As for the settlements where these places are located, the items do already employ location (P276). And if you think that time period (P2348) is used wrongly, you are welcome to suggest a more suitable property instead of using it as an argument to oppose an unrelated property proposal (the improvement of these items should be discussed elsewhere).--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 09:23, 25 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
For each archaeological site the archaeological is a different entity (and thus deserves a different item) then the settlement/aqueducts or whatever was uncovered. This proposal encourages conflating both entities into one item. That conflation produces problems with statements such as the one for the time period. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 18:43, 27 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • ArthurPSmith I have nothing against using the other property for the same purpose but I disagree with calling the concept of this proposal "approach". It's not my own view on how to classify archaeological sites but a scientifically accepted methodology that is applied in the work titled Archaeological map of the Republic of Macedonia published by the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts and authored by an archaeologist and a historian who were both members of the academy. That being said, the failure of this proposal is going against the science which dictates the typology of the archaeological sites. Apart from the scientific foundations of this proposal, there is a clear need for it on the Macedonian Wikipedia where this template has been awaiting the creation of this property so that the line "Тип" (English: type) which refers to the "type of archaeological site" as in the aforementioned work is automatically populated with this information from Wikidata across thousands of articles (one of the main purposes of Wikidata is to serve its sister Wikimedia projects, isn't it?). At the end, I'll leave it up to you to decide if this proposal should be rejected on the merits of scientific methodology being interpreted as worse "approach".--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 18:39, 29 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • It sounded like the idea was to follow the chain P9047/P31 to find the "type" of an archeological site, does that not work? I would think this has broader applicability than just Macedonian also - surely there are other language wikipedias that have similar issues? ArthurPSmith (talk) 19:30, 29 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@ArthurPSmith, Kiril Simeonovski: I'm not sure how we will resolve this. The name of a site in most cases says nothing about what lies there, i.e. what the ruins/remains are of. How do we know if we have remains of a fortress, rather than an ancient town or an aqueduct, basilica etc? That is why this thing seems so necessary. I am aware that it's a national classification in one particular country we are talking about, but I don't see how it wouldn't be an issue in other countries, as you rightly pointed out. The only possibility is that only we call sites simply after the locality (toponym), and everyone else gives them more descriptive names, such as 'Mediaeval Basilica Ruins of X' and so on for everything. In that case, it may be a Macedonia-specific problem. I don't know. Opinions? --B. Jankuloski (talk) 22:57, 29 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
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