This paper describes the architecture and main processes of peer-to-peer (P2P) management of knowledge artifacts based on a distributed ontology. P2P information management and ontologies yield significant advantages when combined and applied as advanced Web application for knowledge management (KM): (1) the knowledge owner (called knowledge peer) keeps control of his/her ontologies and knowledge artifacts against other knowledge peers, (2) corporations benefit because valuable knowledge will spread among knowledge peers due to P2P properties and thus will not be lost even if particular individuals leave the corporation. Our architecture provides several layers including data sources, knowledge artifact resources, knowledge artifact management, and P2P network layers. Furthermore, the main processes of KM, namely, knowledge acquisition and knowledge retrieval are analyzed.