Excavations go mobile: A web-based mobile application for archaeological excavations

This paper presents the implementation and evaluation of a web-based mobile application for supporting the communication and content storage needs of an excavation process by employing a spatial interface. Daily content-based operations in an excavation such as saving artifact-related photos, dimensions and notes are supported as well as the communication of archaeologists and the coordination of their daily tasks. The application is built over a solid content structure suitable for these operations and is executed in modern smartphones by exploiting fully their spatial display and interface capabilities. Related work is examined and compared to the presented application. Following, the design philosophy and implementation details of the application are presented along with evaluation results and usage scenarios.