Overview

The main goals of Open Dig Reports software are to help archaeologists organize digital data produced in the context of archaeological projects and make these data available online.

At its core, it is a "notes and pictures" web-accessed catalogue database that is tailored to store, retrieve, and display digital data related to archaeological projects.

It was designed for use both in the field and in later online collaborative data processing to support large record and media sets, facilitate nuanced data retrieval, and allow for a smooth transition to future institutional online publication.

In addition, it was designed with specialists in mind and with the intention of giving them access to data about the contexts from which their objects of study originated. Accordingly, a central design guideline for the software was to divide the archaeological data into distinct modules, e.g., ceramics, lithics, stones, loci, areas, etc.

Each module has its own set of properties and forms, and all of the modules fit into standard pages, menus, and display elements.

In the following sections, we briefly describe a typical Open Dig Reports website and its standard pages. The order of presentation follows a random user`s exploration of the website.