iDig - Recording Archaeology

iDig is a tool for archaeologists. It has been developed and field-tested at the Athenian Agora Excavations of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (https://www.ascsa.edu.gr/excavations/athenian-agora).

Other excavations and institutes collaborating in the development of iDig include: American/Greek excavations at the Ismenion sanctuary (Thebes), Corinth Excavations, Belgian/Dutch fieldwork at Thorikos, British excavations at Keros, the Casa della Regina Carolina (CRC) Project at Pompeii, the Eastern Boeotia Archaeological Project at Eleon, the Greek underwater survey in the Argo-Saronic Gulf, the Lechaion Harbor and Settlement Land Project, the Molyvoti (Thrace) Archaeological Project, the Packard Humanities Institute, the Teos Excavation Project of Ankara University, Swiss excavations at Eretria and Amarynthos (Euboia), and the Northwest Bolsena Archaeological Project at Valle Gianni.

iDig is designed to produce digital records in the field and is heavily optimized for excavation workflows.

iDig connects wirelessly to Leica Total Stations and keeps excavation data in sync on multiple iPads, streamlining collaboration during the excavation process.

Using animation, an excavator can see and track data from different perspectives: top plan, cross section, and spatial and temporal matrix layouts.

Scanned drawings and plans can be quickly imported and georeferenced right in the app.

Custom fields can be added and excavation records from previous seasons can be imported and connected to the current work for real-time data integration.

Excavation data can be exported in standard formats from the built-in web server and reports can be saved incrementally using simple URL bookmarks.

An external “iDig Server” application can be used to synchronize and version all excavation data into a standard GIT repository (https://github.com/iDig-Recording-Archaeology/idig-server).

The version of iDig released here contains unpublished data from two trenches excavated in 2013. The formal study of this data will be published in Hesperia, the official journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (https://www.ascsa.edu.gr/publications/hesperia).