Searching in Archaeological Texts. Problems and Solutions Using an Artificial Intelligence Approach

Abstract

Searching in documents using full text indices is a powerful tool for retrieving relevant portions of text. However, performance is impeded by ambiguity in texts: similar words may have totally different meanings according to context. This also is true if the words are numbers, periods and place names, especially in archaeological and historical contexts. A new way of indexing texts allows for better and easier searching. This system has been developed in a collaboration between the RCE (The Dutch National Service for Cultural Heritage)¹ and the University of Tilburg. With Open Boek,² it is possible to search on chronological and geographical expressions, as well as regular keywords. In the newest version of Open Boek a number of additions to the system have been made to further improve the functionality.