From earth to cyberspace: the unforeseen evolution

Daniel Arroyo-Bishop

«Archeologia e Calcolatori» 1999, 10, 7-16

Abstract

The ArchéoDATA Archaeological Information System has been under development for some ten years and during this time considerable experience has been gained in the field of archaeological information management. At the outset, a methodological philosophy was established and based on the premise that archaeology was in essence something, somewhere, at sometime. This provided the fundamental platform for data recording and has also given rise to, through the development of the “Entities”, a singular framework for archaeological analysis. The structures necessary to achieve an efficient balance between research, administration and conservation have been worked out and then tested under the actual conditions that will prevail under normal working conditions. The problem has been that at the heart of an AIS is communication, and that the practical means of achieving this are not simple. Not only do we need to efficiently structure the theoretical model, there also has to be the physical means of achieving it. This has been for many years the Achilles heal of implementation, as cost has been seen as being of an order not commensurate with archaeological budgets. The unforeseen evolution of the Internet network into the World Wide multimedia Web has provided information based systems with vast possibilities, and in the case of archaeology, with its first opportunity towards implementing universal communication. This paper describes some of the steps being undertaken to transfer the ArchéoDATA AIS to the Internet.

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