An annotated list of projects, tools, and standards related to the representation of historical time.
- Calendars / dating systems
- Modeling / visualization tools
- Periods
- Standards
- Temporal annotation / entity recognition
ACDH-CH Linked Open Date Entities (LODE) is a data service to provide information about (historical) dates, using Linked Open Data (LOD) techniques. Currently, the entities provide lookups for the time concepts for the precision of day, month, year, decade, century, and millennium. For practical reasons, the 1st implementation covers 6000 years between 3000 BC/BCE and AD/CE 3000 based on ISO8601.
These databases integrate information from various projects at the Library and Information Center at Dharma Drum Institute of Liberal Arts. By providing information on Chinese calendar dates they help with disambiguation and referencing of dates.
- Buddhist Studies Authority Database Project
- Time Authority Database
- Documentation of the Time Authority Database
RDF representation of the Geologic Time Scale, as defined in the International Chronostratigraphic Chart (ICC) from the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS). The ICC embraces both chronostratigraphic (time-rock) units and their equivalent geochronologic (geologic-time) units, the former being related to the ‘Stratigraphic points’ referred to below, and the latter (geochronologic units) being employed in this RDF representation.
The aim of this graph database system is to create and maintain a gazetteer of calendar dates in different calendar systems, initially those used in Greek and Roman antiquity across the mediterranean area, and provide links to attestations of these dates in online editions. Like geographical gazetteers this authority list can be used to provide stable, unique identifiers (URIs) for each date in any of the calendar systems that has been used to refer to an astronomical day in any ancient source, whether literary texts, papyri, ostraca or inscriptions. It will serve as a means to search and browse ancient texts by their precise temporal footprint using these URIs in digital editions and databases or TEI/EpiDoc XML driven projects. Currently there are some 5,800 dates in the database, based on more than 7,000 attestations, from a number of different ancient calendar and dating systems.
Calendars are often different between countries, regions and cultures. This means a possibility that date expressions have to be converted to expressions according to the common calendar when various temporal information are analized. Tools and data for calendar conversion are provided here.
- HuTime Time Basic Data
- HuTime Calendars
- HuTime Calendars Linked Data
- HuTime Calendar Conversion Tool
Shanati is working to compile and integrate all known relevant cuneiform and other textual attestations of dates relevant to the ancient daily Babylonian chronology.
A database of chronological aspects of texts from the ancient world. TM Time is still in its initial phase. Right now it should be seen as a tool to convert dates from old calendar systems to new and vice-versa, which also facilitates finding texts dated to specific periods in Trismegistos.
Present historical events along an interactive visual timeline. Record precise times or use broad, uncertain dates. Map events to historical figures or important theories and movements. See individual timelines for specific people and concepts.
ChronoLog is a software tool for chronological research in archaeology. It allows users to build complex models featuring chronological sequences, bounds on dates and durations, and various types of synchronisms. The software automatically checks the validity of such models, and computes the tightest possible chronological ranges for the date and duration of each chronological object in the model.
A no-code graphical interface for generating temporal data visualizations, designed by the humanities for the humanities.
HuTime is a time information system software application that can help users visualize and analyze temporal information based on time data. Researchers can create chronological tables and charts that include events over various time spans, from periods as short as a single day or hour, to periods as long as a year or century. Thus, users can examine the loaded data in its entirety using the expanded displayed temporal range, and gain an understanding of the times when event information is concentrated or when drastic changes occur. From that point, the user can shrink the displayed temporal range to investigate the details of various events in the most relevant periods.
The Matrix investigates how digital data from archaeological excavations can be more consistently recorded, analysed, disseminated and archived in a way that is Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-useable (FAIR). In particular, the work addresses the lack of standardised approaches to the digital archiving and reuse of archaeological data stratigraphic and phasing data.
The Matrix project has developed software to support stratigraphic analysis and temporal analysis - Phasing, Grouping and Periodization - by archaeologists using Harris Matrix methodologies. The prototype software tool is called "Phaser". The Prototype is not intended currently to be fully functioning Matrix recording and Stratigraphic Phasing analysis and archiving software. It would need more development and administrative work and resources to make it available e.g. as Open and FAIR software through an online tool with suitable registration for an archaeological community of users.
- The Matrix
- Phaser - prototype Grouping and Phasing software tool
- Help file explaining more of the functionality of the Phaser software
- Data samples
iDAI.chronontology (short form: ChronOntology) is a web service that connects chronological terms, i.e. epochs, periods and events, with dating information. Hosted by the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) and part of the iDAI.welt, ChronOntology is an internet research tool for the Archaeology and Altertumswissenschaft (ancient studies and literature). Anyone can refer to its data, and anyone can add their additional project-specific or research-specific data on request. At the DAI, ChronOntology is the standard gazetteer for period names. Like the iDAI.gazetteer for place names, it serves as a norm data vocabulary for other information systems at the DAI and links them with other global time gazetteer systems.
PeriodO is a public domain gazetteer of scholarly definitions of historical, art-historical, and archaeological periods. It eases the task of linking among datasets that define periods differently. It also helps scholars and students see where period definitions overlap or diverge.
The CIDOC CRM is a formal ontology intended to facilitate the integration, mediation and interchange of heterogeneous cultural heritage information and similar information from other domains. It includes a set of properties relating to temporal entities supporting the documentation of dates as time-spans or dimensions, mereological relations between temporal entities, as well as a complete suite of topological relations.
- Definition of the CIDOC CRM (version 7.2.2, September 2022)
- Excerpt from the CRM definition focusing on the temporal modeling constructs
The Extended Date and Time Format (EDTF) was developed at the Library of Congress and is now incorporated into the ISO 8601 standard for representing dates and times. EDTF specifies a standard syntax for expressing uncertain or approximate Gregorian calendar dates, dates with missing parts, sets of possible dates, and open-ended or recurring intervals of time.
- Extended Date/Time Format
- ISO 8601-2:2019 Date and time — Representations for information interchange — Part 2: Extensions
- EDTF Ontology
The Linked Places format supercedes the Pelagios Gazetteer Interconnection Format (PGIF) as a standard for contributions to several partner projects in the Pelagios Network including Recogito, Peripleo-lite, the World Historical Gazetteer, and PeriodO. It is an implementation of GeoJSON-T, an experimental extension to GeoJSON that standardizes the representation of temporal attributes, and it provides for optional temporal scoping of names, geometry, place types, and place relations.
OWL-Time is an OWL-2 DL ontology of temporal concepts, for describing the temporal properties of resources in the world or described in Web pages. The ontology provides a vocabulary for expressing facts about topological (ordering) relations among instants and intervals, together with information about durations, and about temporal position including date-time information. Time positions and durations may be expressed using either the conventional (Gregorian) calendar and clock, or using another temporal reference system such as Unix-time, geologic time, or different calendars.
The documentation available from the Chronology Working Group of the Vocabularies Consortium is intended as a set of minimum best practice guidelines for structuring and linking metadata collections pertaining to chronological knowledge in cuneiform studies. Documentation provided below for individual data entities offers guidance on the alignment and linking of relevant metadata records to external reference indices in order to improve data interoperability, discoverability, and reuse.
Wikidata offers a series of properties with datatype time, which allow storage of basic information defining single point in time. Time datatype can be further expanded with custom qualifiers to allow great range of possible time expressions. Adding and querying dates may seem simple, but available precision and changing calendars add complexity.
Python tool to normalize textual temporal expressions in different languages to a numerical time axis. Textual patterns for seven categories of temporal expression are normalized: Ordinal named or numbered centuries, Year spans; Single year (with tolerance); Decades; Century spans; Single year with prefix; Named periods. The following languages are currently supported: Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Spanish, Swedish, Welsh. The input is a temporal text string and a language code (ISO639-1). The output is a tab delimited text file with start/end years (in ISO 8601 format), relative to Common Era (CE). The normalized outputs are provided as additional attributes along with the original text expression for consuming software to employ in end-user applications.
Experimental multilingual spaCy tools for rule-based Named Entity Recognition (NER) on abstracts and texts relating to archaeological investigations. Comprises a specialised temporal annotator and a vocabulary annotator. The languages currently supported are German, English, Spanish, French , Italian, Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish. A suite of spaCy ‘patterns’ has been developed as Python modules together with a series of specialised NER pipeline components to identify and tag various types of temporal entity within passages of free text. Bulk processing scripts and Python notebooks are included to demonstrate usage and to highlight aspects of the available functionality.