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Thanks Neil, 'Parent-Child', used in this sense, I belive originates simply in the jargon of information system design (David has just supported me on this - thanks!), where one entity is in a hierarchical relationship to another (that is for each instance of the first there may be one or more of the second type of entity). I suppose the analogy is with a family tree, though ironically I've not come across instances of monuments having more than one parent! The jargon is pretty obscure, for which reason INSCRIPTION adopted the more intuitive terms I mentioned earlier. > You say the term/ relationship "Parent-Child" is > "hierarchical". Does this term describe a developmental or > evolutionary process, where the child may be the same or > different from the parent but associated by a developmental > process in time? Or does it describe a componential or > agglomerative association, where the child can only be a > component of a larger parent. To use your associated > monuments example, I may have a series of monument records > the same in space but just different interpretations of the > same evidence, or I might have a series of monuments that > form different non-disputed components of a larger entity > such as Roman city. How does your system cope with these subtleties ? Within the context of MIDAS / INSCRIPTION (and I must comment that these are not 'my system' but agreed national standards) the approach is simply to qualify the link between two records, rather than provide detail of what the basis for the connection is. More detailed recording of why two records are associated would probably be best included in descriptive text, rather than structured fields, where the full range of doubts, uncertainties and methodological angst can be expressed. I guess the issue is: do people need to be able to retrieve records based on the values in these fields? If so, then I'm perfectly happy to see the INSCRIPTION standard terminology for the appropriate MIDAS unit updated to reflect this need, if the SMR community can suggest appropriate terms. Ed