Using Semantic Web to Create and Explore an Index of Toponyms Cited in Medieval Geographical Works

Abstract

Western thought in European history was mainly affected by the image of the world created during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The most popular reason to travel during the Middle Ages was taking a pilgrimage. Jerusalem, Rome, and Santiago de Compostela were the most popular destinations. It is not surprising that a lot of works written by travellers as guides for pilgrims exist. By the beginning of the Renaissance, a more precise image of the world was defined, thanks to the discovery of ancient geographical models, especially the work of Ptolemy. The Italian National Research Project (PRIN) IMAGO --- Index Medii Aevi Geographiae Operum --- (2020-2023) aims to provide a systematic overview of the medieval and renaissance Latin geographical literature using the Semantic Web technologies and the LOD paradigm. Indeed, until now, this literature has not been studied using digital methods. In particular, this article presents how we formally represented the knowledge about the toponyms, or place names, in the IMAGO ontology. To maximise the interoperability, we developed the IMAGO ontology as an extension of two reference vocabularies: the CIDOC CRM and its extension FRBRoo, including its in-progress reformulation, LRMoo. Furthermore, we used Wikidata as reference knowledge base. As case study, we chose to represent the knowledge related to the toponyms cited by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri in his Latin works. We carried out a first experiment for visualising the knowledge about these toponyms on a map and in the form of tables and CSV files.