A Framework for Managing Temporal Dimensions in Archaeological Data

Spatiotemporal data are often expressed in terms of granularities in a granularity system to indicate the measurement units of the data. A granularity system usually consists of a set of granularities that share a “common refined granularity” (CRG) to ensure granular comparison and data conversion within the system. However, if data from multiple granularity systems need to be used in a unified application, it is necessary to extend the data conversion and comparison within a granularity system to those for multiple granularity systems. This paper proposes a formal framework to enable such an extension. The framework involves essentially some preconditions and properties for verifying existence of a CRG and unifying conversions of incongruous semantics, and supports the approach to integrate multiple systems into one processing granular interoperation across systems just like in a single system. Quantification of uncertainty in granularity conversion is also considered to improve the precision of granular comparison.