Being Formal and Flexible: Semantic Wiki as an Archaeological e-Science Infrastructure

The multiple challenges of representing archaeological information both using relational databases and semantic web technologies have been acknowledged in the literature. The present paper discusses findings and observations from an action research study on developing an integrated semantic digital data archive and collaboration platform for archaeological and archaeology related research using a semantic wiki based approach. The observations and findings from the project demonstrate that the discussed approach provides means to address some of the problems related to pre-coordinated formal representation of archaeological knowledge. At the same, the study stresses the importance of a full understanding of the implications of the both old and new systems of knowledge representation. Otherwise the new systems may introduce implicit infrastructural bias comparable to the ones addressed by the novel approach.