Abstract
We are working on a knowledge base to store 3D Andean textile patterns together with rich cultural and historic context information. This will allow ontological studies in museum collections as well as on ethnographic and archaeological fieldwork. We build on an existing ontology, extending it to incorporate more content and make it more accessible. This goes well beyond storing and retrieving textile patterns and enables us to capture the semantics and wider context of these patterns. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.