Mobile Decision Making and Knowledge Management: Supporting Geoarchaeologists in the Field

There is a professional responsibility placed upon archaeologists to record all possible information about a given excavated site of which soil analysis is one important but frequently marginalised aspect. This paper introduces SASSA (Soil Analysis Support System for Archaeologists), whose primary goal is to promote the wider use of soil analysis techniques through a selection of ‘web based’ software tools. A description is given of the field tool developed which supports both the recording of soil related archaeological data in a comprehensive manner and provide a means of inferring information about the site under investigation. Insight is gained through a user evaluating numerous decision trees relating to pertinent archaeological questions. Whilst the field tool is capable of working in isolation, it offers a superior experience when operated in unison with a Wiki. A brief discussion of the use of the Wiki application within the SASSA project is presented.