OXUS-INDUS. A Linked Open Data Resource for research in Central and South Asian Coinages

The OXUS-INDUS project is twin-track initiative to push forward the curation of and research into the material culture of Central and South Asia.
First, it seeks to produce a much-needed tool for understanding the Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek coinage of Central and South Asia at a formative stage of the transfer of monetary technology into this region. Through the creation of a new typology of this coinage by two experts in the field, and the linking to that of multiple, newly catalogued specimens from multiple public collections using established, standards-based technology, it will enable this important body of evidence to be studied as never before, thereby advancing new research agendas. In particular it is hoped that this will allow the study of the archaeology and history of the Graeco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek kingdoms to continue its move away from a polarized view of 'Greek' and 'non-Greek' influences to one of cultural hybridity. Numismatic scholarship has generally remained focused on political history, with attempts to link the coins to the very few historical events known from literary sources. The subject is thus long overdue for a decolonizing approach, moving away from the systems created in the 19th century by historians from a European colonial background and returning to the evidence of the coins themselves. The new overview created by the OXUS-INDUS project will allow a reappraisal of the numismatic evidence for the kingdoms in the light of these new approaches and provide a framework for studying and analyzing the coins, which does not rely on knowledge of detailed and technical numismatic arguments.

Second, the OXUS-INDUS project seeks to apply recent advances in Linked Open Data (LOD) approaches that have been developed in other branches of numismatics to an important new area. In the fields of Greek and Roman numismatics, such approaches, focused on the implementation of the nomisma.org Knowledge Organization System (KOS), have led to wholesale changes in methods of working, both for Researchers and Curators of Collections. By providing an online framework for the organization of a large, disparate mass of data across multiple collections in multiple countries catalogued in multiple languages, the LOD-based approach has cracked open a rich vein of evidence for use by Economic Historians, Art Historians, Archaeologists and Curators. This opportunity will now be extended to colleagues working with the poorly understood coinages of ancient Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, and India. Through collaboration with colleagues in Pakistan, the project will ensure usability for a broad audience beyond the English-speaking world, particularly through the development of a multilingual interface. The OXUS-INDUS project also seeks not only to replicate success in other areas, but also to build on it with a new development. This project will see the creation of a born-digital typology for an ancient coinage, and will also develop a TEI-XSLT-based workflow that will allow the conversion of this digital product simply and cheaply into a printed volume.

The standards-based approach, using the widely-accepted Nomisma KOS and the well-established Numishare platform, will also be fully extensible in the future to extend the approach taken in OXUS-INDUS to other coinages from the region, and from different periods.