This talk addresses the issue of interoperability of data generated by historical research in order to make them re-usable for new research agendas (as a realisation of the FAIR principles). The reasons for adopting the CIDOC CRM as a core ontology for this field, but extending it with some relevant, missing high-level classes, will be discussed while taking advantage of the methodological tools provided by the foundational ontologies DOLCE and DnS. Finally, the talk will show how collaborative data modelling carried out in the ontology management environment OntoME (ontome.net) makes it possible to elaborate a communal fine-grained and adaptive ontology of the domain.