In this article we analyze the main semantics of archival description, expressed through Encoded Archival Description (EAD). Our main target is to map the semantics of EAD to the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CIDOC CRM) ontology as part of a wider integration architecture of cultural heritage metadata. Through this analysis, it is concluded that an EAD document is a hierarchy of documentation elements and attributes and that through this documentation the archive is semantically expressed via 3 hierarchies: hierarchy of physical objects, hierarchy of information objects, and hierarchy of linguistic objects. These semantic views of the archive and its description (e.g., finding aid) as well as their interrelationships are mapped to CIDOC CRM. (Contains 5 tables, 6 figures, 29 notes, and 1 footnote.)