A New Approach to Online Visual Analysis and Sharing of Archaeological Surveys and Image Collections

Abstract

Sharing digital archaeological data via a web-based analytical interface has the potential to engage joint expertise of archaeologists as well as researchers from other disciplines who can explore imagery datasets online and share their findings. These tasks can now be accomplished with a new general-purpose survey data analysis tool called Survey Analysis via Visual Exploration (SuAVE). A test case is presented here with legacy data and new ceramic petrographic data from the large-scale excavations of Shiqmim, a Chalcolithic (ca. 4500--3600 BC) village and cemetery site, located in Israel's northern Negev desert.