Archaeological Computing

"Archaeological Computing is intended to provide an introduction to the use of digital technologies for archaeologists. The first two chapters of the book include discussions of a variety of general computing issues, with special emphases on some matters of more importance to scholars, especially archaeologists, than typical computer users. The three following chapters are focused on the three critical data-recording technologies for archaeological projects - database management, GIS, and CAD - in that sequence. The authors explore the capabilities of those three software types, and much of the discussion centers on organizing data effectively so that the capabilities of the software - and the utility of the software for archaeologists - can be maximized. In the sixth chapter other digital technologies - including digital images, audio, and various kinds of moving images - are discussed in terms of the problems raised by their being digital as opposed to film- or paper-based. A lengthy discussion of digital data protection and preservation follows in the seventh chapter. The eighth and final chapter provides a wrap-up... ...This second edition contains one entirely new chapter concerning the digitizing of data from long-running and/or completed projects. The first edition was focused soley on "born digital" data, yet it should have been clear that many digitizing projects for archaeological data are concerned with data already collected in non-digital forms, requiring digitizing to be approached from a very different perspective.This edition also has been proofread yet again. As a result, it became all too clear that a number of typos and other small errors had been missed in the final proofreading of the first edtion. That number was large enough that it seems pointless to hope all such errors have been found and eliminated. We can at least hope the number has been reduced significantly.The preparation of the second edition also turned up errors in some SELECT statements in the database management chapter. Those statements should now be correct.Other changes are neither critical to meaning nor numerous..."