From the state-of-the-art on 4D data modelling to the archaeologists' dream for the future

Nowadays, exchanging data between various parties has become indispensable and is even taken for granted. In many disciplines, data models have been developed to facilitate the exchange of data. CityGML, for instance, is increasingly used in the domain of urban planning and tourism to describe and exchange city and landscape models in the three spatial dimensions. Such standardized ways of data storage and exchange have undisputable advantages with regard to database consistency and integration of information. In archaeology, the use of a standardized model to describe and interchange data may, besides the previously mentioned advantages, reduce the subjectivity and avoid that data are left behind. The benefits notwithstanding the nature of archaeology imposes some difficulties to the development of a standardized archaeological data model. Both the third, spatial, and the fourth, temporal, dimension needs to be incorporated in the model. Besides this spatio-temporal relationship, the modeling is further complicated by the multitemporality and the data-imperfection which have influence on different part of archaeological data ranging from temporal uncertainty to incomplete geometric data, etc. Furthermore, the discipline is characterized by a large variety of sites types which can be studied on diverse scale levels. In addition to these steps, the use of visualization interface like 3D geographic information systems questions about the interaction between the graphical modeling tools and knowledge management. Hence, integrating these complex elements into one standard, which is suitable for all archaeological data is probably utopian. However, a standard which applies to a part of the discipline, such as built heritage or excavations of West European sites, may be feasible. In order to interpret the archaeologists’ dream for the future, this paper starts from the current state of data modeling in archaeology and a panorama of their use in restitution platforms. In this way, a thorough backbone for outlining future steps in archaeological data modeling is provided.