This thesaurus lists the keywords displayed in the keywords field at the head of essays and articles presented in the Florilegium Urbanum and Market Towns sections of this Web site; the purpose of the keywords field is to provide a brief and rough characterization of the scope of subject-content of each Web page (though not necessarily of the essence of any settlement discussed on that page). Bearing in mind the overall subject focus of this Web-site, urban place-names are included (though few non-urban ones), but personal names (and titles) are excluded, with the exception of a very few well-known non-royal figures of particular significance to urban history; other individuals discussed in some detail may be identified through the biographical master-list.

The thesaurus was created as a crude working tool, which I have chosen to make more widely available at this time to assist researchers in finding resources pertinent to subjects of interest to them; N.B. that not all keywords are yet present in those articles so far placed online. Please make allowance for intra-indexer inconsistency.

This controlled vocabulary is a hybrid of pre-coordinated and post-coordinated terminology. It contains both nouns and adjectival terms, with some terms capable of being used in either role. The 'see also' references include broader, narrower, and near-synonymous terms. The content of this list and decisions made regarding selection of preferred terms have been dictated primarily by the scope and exigencies of the particular body of material with which I am working and my efforts to anticipate the usage of my target audiences; some personal biases are likely to have crept in. This thesaurus is a work in progress.