A GIS and Hypertext-based System for Excavation Documentation

The time-honoured method of recording an excavation, namely writing on a hardbound notebook has several advantages: robustness, ease of use and uniform recording of all elements that constitute the description of the excavation in progress. It also has some drawbacks but the lack of any reasonable alternative so far has made them seem natural : looking for anything specific requires a full sequential scan, statistical processing or querying requires re-inputting the information in a database and publishing requires a whole new reset. Recent advantages in computational technology, mainly the power of personal computers reasonably priced, may offer an alternative system of excavation documentation that will alter the present situation dramatically. In this paper we present a PCbased system for the documentation of an excavation which allows direct storing of text, organised data, maps and pictures. The excavation log is recorded as hypertext and the navigation across the information is richer, through hyperlinks. The data from the excavation are stored and can be queried spatially or based on their description and are presented in different ways. So, the system is a composition of a GIS system, a database and a web browser for viewing the information and with the help of a web server, questions can be submitted to the database and the results can be viewed.