OSDBA: A Bilingual Ontology for the Representation of Shang Dynasty Bronze Artifacts With Archaeometallurgical Knowledge

The bronze artifacts of the Shang Dynasty serve as pivotal carriers of early Chinese civilization’s technological and cultural achievements, with their intricate classification systems and multidimensional attributes (e.g., metallurgical composition, casting techniques, social functions) urgently requiring the support of structured semantic models. This paper presents OSDBA (Ontology for Shang Dynasty Bronze Artifacts), a bilingual ontology designed to overcome data interoperability challenges by integrating archaeometallurgical knowledge. OSDBA integrates concepts from typology, casting technology, and alloy science into a unified semantic framework. Comprising eight core classes, totaling one hundred and seven classes, seven object properties, six data properties, one thousand six hundred fifty-one axioms, and one hundred thirty individuals, it features a bilingual (Chinese-English) schema and is explicitly aligned with the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (ISO 21127:2023) to ensure broad interoperability. Logical consistency was validated using standard reasoners, and functional utility was demonstrated through SPARQL queries. Published as a machine-readable OWL file, OSDBA provides a foundational, extensible knowledge base for facilitating integrated research on Shang bronze culture.