Physical objects
In addition to skeletal remains, skeletal collections may contain other types of objects that bear some type of relation to these. Also, objects from outside the collection might be relevant for research conducted on collection objects. Typically, such items might incorporate the following:
- other types of human remains
- mummified bodies and body parts
- wet specimens
- histological specimen
- other biological materials
- animal bodies and body parts (e.g. recovered from graves or mistaken for human remains)
- plants and plant remains (e.g. recovered from graves)
- artifacts
- archaeological artifacts (e.g. burial objects that were excavated together with skeletons from graves)
- ethnological artifacts
- replica (e.g. casts)
- of human remains
- of artifacts
- models (e.g. of anatomical or pathological structures for didactic purposes)
- documents
In the context of this ontology, these objects fall into four categories:
- human remains
- other biological materials
- artifacts
- documents
Human remains are addressed through the anatomical model. For skeletal remains, the smallest units that need to be addressed for identification are individual bones, represented by the class obo:FMA_6018 ('Bone organ'). Although even bones might be present in fragments, these are problematic to model, as their registration would be extremely time-consuming and there number might vary during handling.
Other biological materials are represented by instances of the class obo:ERO_0000020 ('Biological specimen'). As they are not in the focus of this ontology, no further classification is implemented.
Artifacts are represented by the class crm:E22_Man-Made_Object. There is a special class for :Replica, for which a relation to the object that is represented can be established with the object property :physicalRepresentation.
There are detailed options for representing documents, outlined in Relating documents to other entities.
