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I've been thinking a bit more about this on my way to/from a meeting this morning. Actually it is an issue that we have even within Highland itself: in Caithness it is reasonable to refer to a 'Norse' period, whereas we don't find it useful to refer to such a period in Inverness. Yet people want to search on such terms. So it is useful for users to see where different terms are applied (which might say something about unchallenged assumptions!) but not very useful for everyone to argue over where the limit to the term 'Anglo-Saxon' or 'Roman' (etc) should be drawn. Equally the need to be able to do meaningful cross-border (county/region/national) searches also has to be accommodated. It would be almost as counter-productive to define standardised keywords separately for England, Scotland and Wales based on the present borders as it would to have different ones for Hampshire, Wiltshire and Dorset. Now, I am unfamiliar with Exegesis so I don't know how it works. But I hope it would be flexible enough to accommodate the following suggestion: It seems to me that the best way to deal with the need to deal with 'culturally defined' inquiries might be to define a master list of periods to include (as far as possible) all of the permutations likely to be encountered in the British Isles / Western Europe. Individual SMRs / NMRs would then select those keywords they judged relevant to the individual site. This would in effect let the geographical areas define themselves, regardless of modern administrative boundaries, which would be interesting in itself. By searching the NMRS (for example) for all sites defined as 'Pictish' , or 'Roman' the user would automatically discover the current geographical extent of the use of the term. It would mean a very long keyword list, but in practice local SMRs would only need to load or use those which applied to their own areas. I think we need to draw attention to and accommodate, rather than ignore, the variations in date ranges given to the Iron Age (and other periods). So in the model I suggest above, the keyword list could include Iron Age (600 BC-AD 500) 'Pre-Roman' Iron Age (700 BC-55 BC) Roman (55 BC-AD 450) Pictish (AD 300-1200) Anglo-Saxon (AD 400 - 1100) (What about 'Belgic'?) etc. This would draw the user's attention to regional variations - including those which can apply within England itself. On the second point, Bruce Howard says, "...we should also be moving towards making it easier for researchers to know that when they are searching for data on for example the Iron Age to know that they will get a similar date range no matter which county or region they are searching in. This to me is one of the underlying principles of data standards." Surely the only way to accommodate this requirement is to make such categories (a) very broad (to include the regional variations);(b) compulsory (entered alongside the regional ones), and (c) agreed for Western Europe (or at least across the whole UK). Every feature entered in every SMR or NMR or similar database in Western Europe should (I suggest) be allocated to one or more of the following: Palaeolithic (pre-8000 BC) Mesolithic (8000-4000 BC) Neolithic (4000-2400 BC) Bronze Age (2400-500 BC) Iron Age (600 BC-AD 500) Early Medieval (AD 500 - AD 1200) Late Medieval (AD 1200 - AD 1500) Post Medieval (post-AD 1500) I would hope that we might get reasonable Europe-wide consensus on these. Every (English/Lowland Scottish) Roman site would therefore be entered as "Roman (55 BC - AD 450); Iron Age (700 BC - AD 500)" as well as under any more specific category that might apply, if known, such as "AD 100-200". Roman sites in France and Italy would obviously have a much earlier start date for the Roman period, but in Ireland or Scandinavia would ( presumably) not appear at all. However all sites across Europe from the period, whether within the Empire or outside it, could be assigned to the same 'Iron Age' category. Early 'Anglo-Saxon' sites might I suppose straddle the line between 'Iron Age' and 'Early Medieval' in which case they would have to be entered as both. I would be interested to hear from list members what they think of this. John Wood ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------- John Wood Senior Archaeologist Planning and Development Service The Highland Council Glenurquhart Road Inverness IV3 5NX Tel: 01463 702502 Fax: 01463 702298 Email: [log in to unmask] Web: http://www.higharch.demon.co.uk %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%