Terminology

Image Bank uses a series of controlled vocabularies to improve consistency for both cataloguing and searching. The use of these thesauri provides more effective donation, search and retrieval of images. When creating and searching for images, please take time to use these thesauri to increase the accuracy of your donation/search.

Monument type Types of monuments relating to the built and buried heritage.
Object type Physical evidence, usually portable, resulting from past human activity or environmental remains that can be recovered from archaeological fieldwork.
Building Materials Construction materials for monuments relating to the built and buried heritage.
Method The thesaurus is an indexing tool to be used for recording archaeological and architectural investigative, data collection exercises; from intrusive interventions into the resource to non damaging survey events.
Military Defences Types of defensive monuments relating to the 20th century in Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Maritime Craft Craft types which survive as wrecks for the RCHME’s maritime record and can be used to describe types of ship.
Period Terms A breakdown of period terms and their chronological extent.
Full list A full list of thesauri issued by English Heritage and National Monuments Record.

The nature of these thesauri means that they have a British/English focus; consequently they may not be particularly useful for those images taken from other geographic areas. In these instances we suggest that donors use the accepted terminologies for the specific geographical locations.