Archaeological classification and ontoterminology: the case of Islamic archaeology of the al-Andalus

This paper describes the continuities and discontinuities between classification as a practice in archaeology and the development of an ontoterminology in the domain of Islamic archaeology of the al-Andalus. Developing an ontoterminology requires an interdisciplinary approach, which effectively places terminology as a subject matter between linguistics and knowledge representation and reasoning. The example of lighting artefacts shown in this paper demonstrates that the archaeological typologies have information that is implied or conflated in their proposed ordering of artefacts. While the purpose of the typologies is to express the names of artefact types in Islamic archaeology, the development of an ontoterminology requires a formalism in which the essential characteristics of each artefact type are made explicit. This allows for a better understanding of the typologies of artefacts through logical reasoning.