Between Written and Visual Communication: CIDOC CRM Ontology for Medieval and Early Modern European Graffiti

Abstract

The development of graffiti studies during the last couple of decades highlighted the relevance and potential of graffiti as a complementary source for understanding different aspects of past societies. Moreover, the availability of digital documentation techniques crucially increased data production, showing the widespread presence of graffiti in Medieval and Early Modern contexts across Europe. However, the approach to historical graffiti has not been yet structured. Guidelines, specific analytical tools, and descriptors are still missing due to various reasons. First, graffiti are a multiform and multimodal graphic expression, so texts, signs, images must be considered together despite their different communicative nature. Secondly, due to their variety in forms and contents, graffiti have been studied from many perspectives – e.g., epigraphy, palaeography, history, art history, maritime studies- following the specific interests of each scholar. Consequently, the numerous and extensive contributions concerning graffiti highlight the lack of shared standards and approaches, hindering data analysis and interoperability. The panorama emerging is fragmentary and unstructured. This paper, thus, aims to offer a first step towards the development of a specific methodology for the analysis and study of Medieval and Early Modern European graffiti. Precisely, a specific ontology adopting CIDOC CRM for Medieval and Early Modern graffiti will be presented, as developed in a preliminary form within the DIGIGRAF project with the support of the ARIADNEplus network.

Historic Graffiti as a Visual Medium for the Sustainable Development of the Underground Built Heritage

“…A final step was the creation of a specific ontology [34] to keep track of all the different phases of work while defining, in a semantic way, the relationships between the different steps and elements involved in the workflow.…”

“…According to Dr. Yana Tchekhanovets' research, evidence suggests that Armenians were the creators and masterminds behind the design of the crosses [22] (pp. [30][31][32][33][34][35]. She highlights different elements to support her hypothesis, focusing on the preeminent role of the symbol of the cross in the Armenian tradition across centuries and territories.…”

“…The support is not created to host graffiti, and graffiti cannot exist per se as an object, but just as a result of an intervention on a surface. This aspect is crucial to highlighting the nature of graffiti, which is the result of an action on an existing object rather than the creation of a written artifact-As epigraphs [34]. Their nature encompasses the tangible evidence of a graphic action performed on an existing surface to record intangible practices.…”

“…As graphic evidence and a form of communication, semiotics studies helped identify the three constitutive elements involved in the process of graffiti making, defined as form, content, and space [36]. Moreover, a specific ontology was created to define the relationship between the three elements, explaining the graffiti-making process and the reading/deciphering activities [34]. The theoretical model developed represents the key point for the graffiti analysis and study.…”

“…Graffiti expressing this function is defined as commemorative, mainly in the context of historic graffiti [40] (pp. [30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38].…”