The Historical Framing Problem: Temporal Modeling of Interactions between Tangible and Intangible Cultural Heritage

Submitted by Charles van den... on 01/30/2026 - 06:42

Tracking #: 4021-5235

Authors: 
Charles van den Heuvel
Sofia Baroncini

Responsible editor: 
Guest Editors 2025 OD+CH

Submission type: 
Full Paper
Abstract: 
The distinction between tangible and intangible cultural heritage (CH) is problematic for modeling interactions between material and immaterial expressions of the arts and culture. This hinders capturing changes in CH objects in their cultural contexts necessary to understand their social functions and symbolic meanings. This paper addresses this problem twofold. First, after providing a theoretical-historiographical overview of the concepts of framing and historical time, the present paper proposes a historical frames system consisting of reference frames and historical frames. A model of historical frames allowing for spatiotemporal views of storylines is discussed in more detail. Second, a framework of ontological modules is provided that expresses the historical frames by extending existing ontologies. As most interactions between tangible and intangible CH are less defined, particular attention is paid to the modeling of ephemeral events. The model is designed using five types of such interactions in a case study of the late 12th century reliquary shrine of St. Servatius in Maastricht and festivities around it. The outcomes are four modules describing 1) functions of objects in context 2) frames capturing different temporal events, in particular ephemeral events, 3) the evolution of material and immaterial objects, and 4) peculiarities of ephemeral events and objects.
Full PDF Version: 
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Previous Version: 
The Historical Framing Problem: Temporal Modeling of Interactions between Tangible and Intangible Cultural Heritage
Tags: 
Reviewed
Long-term Stable Link to Resources: 
https://github.com/SofiBar/CulturalHeritageHistoricalContext

Decision/Status: 
Accept

Solicited Reviews:
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Review #1
Anonymous submitted on 27/Feb/2026
Suggestion:
Accept
Review Comment:

The authors have done an excellent work in revising their submission. The paper now makes explicit and motivates the assumptions highlighted by the reviewers, bringing to light the original and significant aspects of their work and discussing relevant aspects that had previously been left aside.

The paper is now more coese and coherent. The introduction of the list of requirements, the overview in Section 8, and the description of Module 1 function well as a guide to the reading.

The paper's length has increased further, but I think this is justified by the theoretical complexity of the proposed model and by the careful and detailed analysis of the case study.

The repository is well organized and easy to access.

Review #2
By Franziska Pannach submitted on 10/Mar/2026
Suggestion:
Accept
Review Comment:

I would like to thank the authors for the revisions of their manuscript "The Historical Framing Problem: Temporal Modeling of Interactions between Tangible and Intangible Cultural Heritage". I appreciate the time and effort that went into making the necessary changes to the article.

The detailed response letter and highlighted revisions in the manuscript made it easy to follow the revisions. In this version, my concerns have been thoroughly addressed. I am therefore pleased to recommend the article for publication.

Review #3
Anonymous submitted on 12/Mar/2026
Suggestion:
Accept
Review Comment:

This manuscript has be thoroughly revised following the reviewers' suggestions. I think it can now be accepted for publication.
I have to additional suggestions that I invite the authors to consider:
1. The use of w3id URIs is a very good choice but the documentation and repository redirect to pages that are ephemeral. To ensure the persistence of the pages, I suggest to create a GitHub release so that the w3id can always point to the last stable version of the ontology.
2. I find section 4 a bit confusing: various ontologies are mentioned, discussing some of their classes. After section 3, it would be useful to first define the requirements of the concepts to be included in an ontology able to express historical frames. Such requirements can partly be inferred from the RQs listed in section 1, but they are not completely clear. They are very clearly stated in section 5.4 and then in section 7, so I suggest moving the discussion of the various existing ontologies (section 4) before section 8.1. In this way, the classes of existing ontologies can be discussed for their expressivity and completeness in relation to the requirements.