A Ding Ontology of Chinese Bronze

Abstract

Ding is a significant type of Chinese bronze that holds key cultural value. Traditional humanists have primarily focused on dating and classifying Ding. However, in the context of Digital Humanities, the research perspective of humanities scholars is gradually shifting towards data-driven research, with linked data emerging as a popular topic. A well-defined and standard ontology representing the complete domain knowledge is essential for linked Ding data. Unfortunately, most existing ontology cannot represent fine-grained knowledge of Ding or is too restrictive to represent partial knowledge of bronze Ding. In this context, we propose a fine-grained Ding ontology to represent the bronze Ding knowledge. In this paper, we present in detail the Ding ontology of Chinese bronze during the Shang and Zhou dynasties (from 1600 BC to 256 BC). We provide a detailed exposition of the Ding ontology and evaluate its effectiveness using OOPS!, OntoMetrics, and by answering competency questions in SPARQL. The building methodology of Ding ontology follows the ISO principles (ISO 1087 and ISO 704). The objective of this paper is to develop an open ontology of Ding during the Shang and Zhou dynasties, which can serve as a valuable resource for bilingual terminology dictionaries. The Ding ontology was published at http://www.dhontology.com/ChineseCulture/data/bronze.owl.