The Management Of Knowledge In Archaeology: Models, Languages And Conceptual Modelling Of Instruments From Xml To Semantic Web

Despite the fact that an increasing number of researchers in the cultural heritage sector is recognising the advantages that could derive from the use of knowledge management methodologies and tools, a lack of awareness of the basic principles of this discipline is still rather evident. Key concepts like "knowledge representation", metadata, conceptual modeling, syntactic or semantic interoperability, ontologies, can prove difficult to understand (and even more difficult to apply) for researchers with a background in the humanities.This contribution, therefore, aims at clarifying the theoretical reference framework through the concrete analysis of archaeological materials. In fact, while it seems easier to borrow definitions and theoretical concepts or to artificially create even very complex conceptual models (e.g. the CIDOC CRM, which has recently been recognised as an ISO standard), it is a lot harder to implement such principles onto real world objects analysis.According to this assessment, and to the need of going from theoretical to practical aspects, the paper is structured in three parts: the first offers a theoretical base that makes available, even for non-experts, the tools for addressing more operational aspects; the second describes, through practical examples, both the knowledge representation model and the software tool used for analysing a class of materials, the Etruscan urns, as shown in the third part. The final objective is, therefore, to provide a point of reference for facilitating the approach towards KM (Knowledge Management) and help clarifying the key elements of a discipline that is obtaining a growing success but, so far, still showing a high level of entropy.