Three nations - England, Scotland, and Wales - have separate terminology systems for recording cultural heritage sites. A project aims to combine these systems into a single Thesaurus of Cultural Heritage, addressing challenges from regional differences, recording practices, and standards. A collaborative online tool called EHKOS was created to allow experts to map concepts between terminologies and develop the unified thesaurus.

1. Three nations separated by a common
language: Building the Thesaurus of Cultural
Heritage.
Presenter: Phil Carlisle
English Heritage
Date: Wednesday 21st, November 2012
TRACK 3: NEW FRONTIERS IN INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
SESSION: WORDS AND THEIR MEANINGS

2. Introduction
• About me
• Background
• The Thesaurus of Cultural Heritage
• Scope of the project
• Problems
• One possible solution

3. Background
• 1908 - Establishment of the Royal Commissions on the
Historical Monuments of England, and the Ancient and
Historical Monuments of Scotland and Wales
• 1930s - Ordnance Survey Archaeology Division
• 1980s - OS records cards transferred to
RCHME/RCAHMS/RCAHMW
• 1990s - Computerization of OS record cards to create
the National Monument Records
• 1995 – Publication of RCHME/EH thesauri
• 1999 – RCHME/English Heritage Merger

4. Thesaurus of Cultural Heritage
• First conceived in 2000 (!) as the British and Irish
Thesaurus of Cultural Heritage
• Intended to provide a common terminology for use in
recording the built and buried heritage of the UK and
Ireland
• RCHME/EH thesauri
• RCAHMS wordlists
• RCAHMW wordlist

5. Scope of the project
• Combine the terminologies relating to Monument Type in
use by the 3 home nations’ National Monuments Records
(NMRs)
• Extend vocabularies to include Welsh and Scots Gaelic
• Add other vocabularies to create Uber-thesaurus
• Include Periods
• Add images
• Add articles

6. Obstacles to collaboration
• Different perspectives on:
– Regional terminology
– Periods and dating
• Different recording practices
– Phasing
• Standard Deviation
– When is it okay to change a standard
– When is a castle a concentric castle?

7. Aerial view of Mid Vord Cairn and Treawick Township. Copyright RCAHMS

8. Regional Terminology
• English
– Plain An Gwarry - Cornish Amphitheatre
– Wootton Hill Style Enclosure – a defended enclosure usually found in Northamptonshire
– Jube/cludgie/jakes/gong – toilets
• Scottish
– Township - A group of dwellings, associated farm buildings and land, held by two or more
joint tenants usually working the land communally. Includes Clachan and Fermtoun
– Backlands - An area of open ground associated with a medieval urban dwelling.
– Blackhouse - A dwelling comprising byre, barn and living quarters, with walls consisting of
inner and outer dry stone facings with an insulating turf core.
• Welsh
– Llys - Regional court or administrative centre of a Welsh Prince.
– Ty Bach - A small building containing a lavatory.
– Argae - a flood defence bank in the Upper Severn Valley

9. Case Study “VALLUM”
• Same word, different meanings
– EH Term = VALLUM (BT RAMPART)
• “A flat bottomed ditch flanked by mounds running to the south of
Hadrian's Wall for much of its length, marking the boundary of the
military zone.”
– RCAHMS Term = VALLUM (BT BOUNDARY EARTHWORK)
• A boundary comprising a ditch and one or more earth banks. Usually
associated with either a monastery or a Roman military installation.
– RCAHMW Term = Monastic Vallum USE RELIGIOUS HOUSE

10. Periods and dating
• ROMAN
– England & Wales
• 43AD-410AD
– Scotland
• No Roman Period
• MEDIEVAL
– England
• 1066-1540 (dissolution of the monasteries)
– Wales
• 1066-1536 (Act of Union between England and Wales)
– Scotland
• 1058-1542 (Ascension to the throne of Mary Queen of Scots)

11. Recording Practice: Phasing a site
• EH - Record may have multiple periods involving multiple
site types split into distinct phases
• RCAHMW – Multiple periods, multiple site types
• RCAHMS - Only dating for Prehistoric, Roman and 20th
Century, multiple site types per record

12. Standard Deviation
• EH Thesaurus of Monument Types forms basis of both
Scottish and Welsh Thesauri
• Scottish and Welsh ‘stripped back’
– CASTLE but not CONCENTRIC CASTLE
– PILLBOX but not PILLBOX (TYPE FW3/24)
• Hierarchical, Equivalent and Associative relationships have
been altered and/or removed

13. RAF Aerial View of Beaumaris Castle, Anglesey. Copyright RCAHMW

14. Case Study “CASTLE”
• Welsh thesaurus stripped back to only include ‘CASTLE’
• Wales has the most and best examples of concentric
castles in the UK including Beaumaris
• Conversely England has no true concentric castle

15. Solving the problem
• Move to a ‘concept’ based rather than ‘term’ based KOS
But…
• Requirement for a collaborative editing tool
• Requirement for a CHEAP editing tool
• Needs to be future-proofed
• Needs to be able to create/host/map terminologies
• Needs to be accessible remotely
• Needs to allow different levels of access
• Needs to allow multilingual capability

16. www.ehkos.org.uk
• Intended as a collaborative tool for
use by the heritage community
• Intended to be ‘All-singing, all-
dancing’ with more bells and
whistles than are strictly necessary
• Phase 1 – completed in 2006
• Developed in-house (EH) on a
shoe-string budget
• Phase 1 – Live (ish) but bug-tastic
• Phase 2 – In the process of being
specified
• Unlikely to be funded
internally

17. Editing
• Allows registered users to
contribute
• 3 levels of access
• Registered – submit candidate
concepts
• Admin – manage KOS
• Super User – manage KOS and
users

18. Mapping
(and other fancy stuff coming soon hopefully)
• Tool enables terminologies to
be imported and mapped to
core vocabularies
• Manages controlled
vocabularies of all types.
– Including People and
Organisations
• Able to create new
relationship types including
CIDOC- CRM properties
• Export/import in various
formats including BS8723,
SKOS, csv etc.

19. Contact
Phil Carlisle
Data Standards Unit,
English Heritage
The Engine House
Fire Fly Avenue
Swindon
SN2 2EH
Email: philip.carlisle@english-heritage.org.uk
EH Thesauri: http://thesaurus.english-heritage.org.uk/
EHKOS: http://www.ehkos.org.uk/
RCAHMS Thesaurus: http://canmore.rcahms.gov.uk/
RCAHMW Thesaurus: http://www.coflein.gov.uk/