Databases for Multiple Archaeological Excavations and Internet Applications

INtrODUctION The science of Archaeology has been in existence for a long time and the way an archaeological excavation is conducted hasn't changed much. However, the way archaeological data is recorded has changed dramatically by the progress of technology and the widespread use of computers. Nowadays, almost any archaeological excavation uses databases to record not only the objects which have been found, but also the various data which come up during the excavation process (Lock, 2003). Many remarkable researches have been conducted by archaeologists who developed standards and methods for recording the data which was produced during an archaeological excavation. Although many excavators use particular standards and methods for data recording, these usually cannot be completely implemented and have to be adapted to the particular requirements of the excavation. The reasons why this is happening are the various differences excavations have; in how archaeologists excavate a site, which data is recorded and how the data is characterized (we will discuss further this topic in the following chapters). Therefore, databases that have been used have been developed by archaeologists and database developers, in order to satisfy the particular data recording requirements of each excavation. To achieve this, databases are commonly developed completely from scratch and separately for each excavation, in order to come up with the different needs archaeologists have. It is obvious that different databases have different structures, which basically means that they consist of different tables with different columns. In order to create a database which can handle multiple excavations, the above differences make it necessary to provide archaeologists the capability of recording data according to their 1421 Databases for Multiple Archaeological Excavations and Internet Applications needs. Therefore, a database should be indirectly modified by archaeologists in order to meet their needs, without changing the database structure. This means that archaeologists do not intervene within the database structure in order to modify it, which results in the structural integrity of the database (we will discuss further this topic in the following chapters). The main purpose of such a database is to improve the capability of sharing archaeological data and knowledge of different excavations with other archaeologists, scientists and generally with other people. Also, a multiple excavation database can improve the collaboration between archaeologists, by letting them work on a specific database structure which can be indirectly modified (Burenhult, 2001). Another issue is the compatibility between databases and other information …