Standards and quantification of coin iconography: possibilities and challenges

The use of digital technologies and big data in the humanities and social sciences provided many opportunities for cultural heritage management and research, enabling data sharing and interdisciplinary collaborations. These developments increased the need for standardized data formats. General and domain-specific standards for describing and classifying cultural data, based on linked data principles, are developed to support increasingly numerous digital collections. However, the existing standards do not fully address the particular challenges concerning the standardized descriptions of images. Here we focus on ancient coins, an official image-bearing medium. We present current approaches to coin iconography, including the application of statistical measures to infer patterns in the use of images for communication. We discuss the importance of consistent, standardized data for quantitative research, and propose a generalized approach, focused on basic concepts and limiting the level of detail for the sake of simplicity, interoperability, and compatibility with statistical methods, as a necessary first step towards creating reliable iconographic standards.