Classical Archaeology and Art History Commons^™

3.2. Measure Twice, Cut Once: Cooperative Deployment Of A Generalized, Archaeology-Specific Field Data Collection System, Adela Sobotkova, Shawn A. Ross, Brian Ballsun-Stanton, Andrew Fairbairn, Jessica Thompson, Parker Vanvalkenburgh

Mobilizing the Past

The Federated Archaeological Information Management Systems (FAIMS) Project is an Australian, university-based initiative developing a generalized, open-source mobile data collection platform that can be customized for diverse archaeological activities. Three field directors report their experiences adapting FAIMS software to projects in Turkey, Malawi, and Peru, highlighting three themes: (1) the transition from paper to digital recording has upfront costs with backend pay-off, (2) the transition involves decisions and tradeoffs that archaeologists and technologists need to make together, and (3) digital recording has both short- and long-term benefits. In the short-term, project directors reported efficient acquisition of richer, more accurate, data. …