An ecosystem of tools and methods for archaeological research

The present paper describes the design strategies of an ecosystem of tools and services, currently under construction, developed in cooperation among archaeologists and computer science experts of the Università degli Studi di Milano and architects and topographers of the Politecnico di Milano. This ecosystem is based on the archaeological experience carried out in Tarquinia since 1982 in the frame of the “Tarquinia Project”. The project takes into account the analysis and processing of multifaceted archaeological evidences in a context-oriented environment, in which interdisciplinary contributions of several scientist are combined and integrated, in order to grasp the original system of interaction of different branches of the ancient reality. Such a cooperation needs a system of "query/communication" able to integrate archaeological data, artefacts and architectural structures (subsoil and over-ground), cartographic and photographic documentation and scientific contents, achieved in the past and implemented during the field research. The proposed ecosystem aims to provide a set of services for federating different existing data-sources (GIS, including 3D tools), through the definition of a semantic network of relationships among landscapes, stratigraphic layers, structures and artefacts of an excavation site (ArchMatrix). This ecosystem is based on an innovative global design method, focused on the management of raw-data captured and analyzed by different experts in a collaborative way. The aim is to develop a solution able to support analyses and studies grounded in the real needs of the archaeological investigation, by enabling archaeologists in producing archaeological and historical interpretations starting from the real core of the documentation they deal with. In such a framework, the present paper focuses on a novel approach to identify the object of the archaeological research, starting from the needs of field archaeology, and on the design of a system meant to solve problems according to an integrated approach in a unique context of analysis.