Provenance Context Research Articles

Bronzi figurati romani dal territorio di Mantua, Italia

Roman Figural Bronzes from the Territory of Mantua, Italy. In recent years, many discoveries have been made in the country around Castel Goffredo, in the province of Mantua (Northern Italy). These are Roman small objects mainly in bronze, iron, lead, as they were found with the use of metal detectors. For this reason, the context of provenance is often unknown and the analysis of the finds is difficult. The knowledge of these objects was deepened following the setting up of the new archaeological section of the Museum of Castel Goffredo (MAST), inaugurated in June 2021. The Roman figural bronzes found in this territory are presented here. The remains of a lararium, including an interesting statuette of Aesculapius, has been examined in the typological framework of the bronze representations of this god.

Proveniência e contexto digital: contribuições da ciência da informação

O objetivo deste artigo é discutir o conceito da proveniência e evidenciar sua importância no ambiente digital, focado na perspectiva da Ciência da Informação. Como procedimentos metodológicos, caracterizou-se por ser uma pesquisa qualitativa e exploratória, a partir de uma revisão de literatura sobre o contexto da proveniência em diferentes domínios. O artigo apresenta uma discussão do termo proveniência em diversos contextos, como na Arquivologia, Museologia, Preservação digital e Computação e destaca sua importância no âmbito digital. Conforme discutida a relevância da proveniência em diferentes contextos, destaca-se a necessidade de estudos mais aprofundados, se os instrumentos para representar a proveniência são adequados para garantir a veracidade e a inalterabilidade das informações. Dessa forma, as discussões expostas neste artigo revelam possibilidades em identificar metadados para cada característica que a proveniência possa apresentar, além da viabilidade de ampliação para outros contextos.

A systematic review of provenance systems

Provenance refers to the entire amount of information, comprising all the elements and their relationships, that contribute to the existence of a piece of data. The knowledge of provenance data allows a great number of benefits such as verifying a product, result reproductivity, sharing and reuse of knowledge, or assessing data quality and validity. With such tangible benefits, it is no wonder that in recent years, research on provenance has grown exponentially, and has been applied to a wide range of different scientific disciplines. Some years ago, managing and recording provenance information were performed manually. Given the huge volume of information available nowadays, the manual performance of such tasks is no longer an option. The problem of systematically performing tasks such as the understanding, capture and management of provenance has gained significant attention by the research community and industry over the past decades. As a consequence, there has been a huge amount of contributions and proposed provenance systems as solutions for performing such kinds of tasks. The overall objective of this paper is to plot the landscape of published systems in the field of provenance, with two main purposes. First, we seek to evaluate the desired characteristics that provenance systems are expected to have. Second, we aim at identifying a set of representative systems (both early and recent use) to be exhaustively analyzed according to such characteristics. In particular, we have performed a systematic literature review of studies, identifying a comprehensive set of 105 relevant resources in all. The results show that there are common aspects or characteristics of provenance systems thoroughly renowned throughout the literature on the topic. Based on these results, we have defined a six-dimensional taxonomy of provenance characteristics attending to: general aspects, data capture, data access, subject, storage, and non-functional aspects. Additionally, the study has found that there are 25 most referenced provenance systems within the provenance context. This study exhaustively analyzes and compares such systems attending to our taxonomy and pinpoints future directions.

Un disco-coraza de hierro de la Bastida de les Alcusses (moixent, valencia)

Se presenta un disco-coraza de hierro procedente del oppidum ibérico de la Bastida de les Alcusses documentado con motivo de la revisión completa de los hallazgos de las excavaciones realizadas entre 1928 y 1931. La pieza es una lámina seudocircular en cuyo perímetro se distribuyen unos pequeños remaches para suspender el disco a las correas de sujeción, realizadas probablemente en cuero. Después de presentar el disco y los resultados de las analíticas EDXRF que permiten identificar los metales utilizados en la producción del disco (hierro) y los remaches (plata y cobre), se analiza su contexto de hallazgo, se encuadra históricamente esta categoría de armamento defensivo. Finalmente, se interpreta en su contexto social de la primera mitad del siglo IV a. C. en el sudeste ibérico.

Ambient Functions: Abandoned Children to Zoos

Since records are timebound and contextual metadata must be understood by an observer whose frame of reference is different from that of the recordkeeper, there is a need for external validation. The processes of terminological control (based on definition) are inadequate for this purpose. What is needed is a process of contextual control (based on observation). Ambience is the context of provenance and it is there that we will find external validation of provenance data. Functions offer one possible tool for crafting ambient relationships.Ambient functions define and give meaning to agents of recordkeeping within the context in which they operate. Ambient functions should be distinguished from business activities and processes which do not afford the basis for meaningful discrimination necessary when formulating appraisal categories and useful searchpatterns.Archivaria, vol. 40, no. Fall, p. 21-39

Making geological sense of ‘Big Data’ in sedimentary provenance analysis

Sedimentary provenance studies increasingly apply multiple chemical, mineralogical and isotopic proxies to many samples. The resulting datasets are often so large (containing thousands of numerical values) and complex (comprising multiple dimensions) that it is warranted to use the Internet-era term ‘Big Data’ to describe them. This paper introduces Multidimensional Scaling (MDS), Generalised Procrustes Analysis (GPA) and Individual Differences Scaling (INDSCAL, a type of ‘3-way MDS’ algorithm) as simple yet powerful tools to extract geological insights from ‘Big Data’ in a provenance context. Using a dataset from the Namib Sand Sea as a test case, we show how MDS can be used to visualise the similarities and differences between 16 fluvial and aeolian sand samples for five different provenance proxies, resulting in five different ‘configurations’. These configurations can be fed into a GPA algorithm, which translates, rotates, scales and reflects them to extract a ‘consensus view’ for all the data considered together. Alternatively, the five proxies can be jointly analysed by INDSCAL, which fits the data with not one but two sets of coordinates: the ‘group configuration’, which strongly resembles the graphical output produced by GPA, and the ‘source weights’, which can be used to attach geological meaning to the group configuration. For the Namib study, the three methods paint a detailed and self-consistent picture of a sediment routing system in which sand composition is determined by the combination of provenance and hydraulic sorting effects.