Towards an ontology-driven information system for archaeological pottery studies: the Greyware experience

Abstract

The archaeological analysis of medieval and modern pottery has benefited from the consolidation of archaeometry in the domain of Medieval Archaeology in the past few decades. As part of an ongoing research project devoted to the characterization of pottery production, distribution processes and technological transfer, we deal with a considerable amount of data that are very diverse in origin and nature and must be exploited within an integrated information system in order to provide information for historical knowledge. The Greyware system has been designed to fulfil this goal and provides the main categories for pottery analysis within a shareable and reusable scenario. Its development and application prove that a little semantics goes a long way and that the creation of domain ontologies for archaeological research is an iterative process under development, as long as several projects sharing data, resources and time can develop a collaborative framework to maximize the assets of individual expertise and collaborative work. In this paper, we discuss the requirements of the system, the challenge of developing strategies for normalized data management and their potential for exploiting historical vestiges from an integrated perspective.