Interoperate with whom? Formality, Archaeology and the Semantic Web

Interoperability is often cited as a desirable end-goal for in-formation systems, but the highly abstract nature of this apparent benefit sits uneasily with the task-oriented realities of data-management. The approach most frequently advo-cated is to increase the formality of the system, which facil-itates system-integration yet also raises additional barriers to entry that reduce the potential pool of systems to inter-operate with. The Semantic Web initiative in particular has faced accusations that difficulties associated with its adop-tion can outweigh the perceived benefits of data-sharing [9]. This issue will be discussed in reference to current doctoral research being undertaken in Humanities data integration. It will argue that technologies that either heavily front-load or defer dealing with semantic complexity are unlikely to b