The AMICO Data Dictionary under discussion by the Technical Committee has distinct fields for Measurement-Text, Measurement-Extent, Measurement-Dimension, Measurement-Dimension-Quantity, Measurement-Dimension-Units, and Measurement-Qualifier. In the mapping exercise, we've found that few of the members are recording measurements with separate fields for the Extent (part measured), Dimension (height, volume, circumference, weight, etc.), Quantity (a number) and Unit (ft.,mm, pounds, etc.). This is unfortunate, since it makes it impossible to display objects in relative proportion to each other. Measurement-Text, however, is provided as the field in which whatever measurements do exist and are not separately broken out, can be recorded. Sometimes this might be prose; other times it might be concatenated measurement data.

Creation-Date-Text reflects a similar problem. Sometimes members have not broken the creation dates out and record ranges, together with all kinds of qualifiers, in one field: "not later than 1100 or before 970, likely around 1020" as well as examples, such as the one you give, for Minoan Period. In either case, the "text" field holds the unstructured data. If the data is available in a structured form, it would be provided in the Creation-Date-Start and Creation-Date-End fields, with appropriate Creation-Date-Qualifiers.

The final question about Object-Type and Classification-Term is a very good one. In order to arrive at the best answer, it will probably be necessary to examine the actual data values which arcurrently being recorded by members in these fields both when the member uses only one or the other field, and when they use both. Clearly we will need both for members and users, more detailed examples of correct use.