Extended Matrix Framework — Documentation

Note

You are reading the manual of the Extended Matrix (EM) — the formal language at the heart of the Extended Matrix Framework. For an overview of the project, the tools that build on EM and the latest news, the reference site is extendedmatrix.org.

This documentation covers EM 1.6 — currently under active development. For the current stable language reference, see the EM 1.5 manual.

Extended Matrix is a formal language used to document stratigraphy and virtual reconstruction processes. It is intended for archaeologists and heritage specialists who need to keep track, in a robust and verifiable way, of the sources, analyses and interpretive steps that lead from scientific evidence to a reconstruction. Development is led by E. Demetrescu at CNR-ISPC (Rome, former CNR-ITABC).

Quick start

Start ↗	First contact with Extended Matrix — what it is, who it is for and why it matters.
Choose your Path ↗	Guided picker on the project website to find the right entry point for your role and project.
Learn EM	The guided tour through this manual — calibrated for humanists, archaeologists, 3D modellers and developers.

Documentation ecosystem

The Extended Matrix Framework is documented across several manuals, each focused on a specific layer of the ecosystem. The table below shows where to go for what.

Manual	Open	Focus
Extended Matrix (this manual)	you are here	The formal language: stratigraphic nodes, paradata, sources, connectors, epochs, qualia.
EM-Tools	Open ↗	Blender add-on that connects an EM graph to 3D content for reconstruction work.
3DSC	Open ↗	Blender environment for high-quality 3D survey processing that feeds EM-Tools.
s3dgraphy	Open ↗	Python library — the computational implementation of EM as a property knowledge graph (GraphML/JSON).
Heriverse	Open ↗	Heritage Science Metaverse — web-based publication and collaborative VR for EM-aware scenes.

If you are unsure where to start: stay here if you have evidence to organise and a notation to learn; open EM-Tools if you have 3D content to annotate in Blender; reach for 3DSC if you have raw survey data to clean and align; open Heriverse when your reconstruction is ready to be shared with the world.

Note

This documentation describes the EM 1.6 development version: the notation may still receive minor adjustments before the final release. For the current stable language reference, see the EM 1.5 manual.