A Holonic Multi-agent System for Sketch, Image and Text Interpretation in the Rock Art Domain∗

This paper presents the architecture of a holonic multi-agent system for rock art interpretation and discusses the results achieved within the “Indiana MAS” project. We show how the AgentSketch and the ImageRec holons belonging to the Indiana MAS, able to cope with hand drawn sketches and images respectively, have been tested in the domain of Mount Bego’s prehistoric rock art (southern French Alps), and how the Manent agent-based framework for the seamless integration of Digital Libraries has been plugged into Indiana MAS to provide text classification, as well as multilingual access to structured repositories. The way Indiana MAS holons cooperate in order to provide correct interpretations of ambiguous shapes is discussed by means of an example based on hypotheses recently advanced by archaeologists.