The archeoViz Ecosystem for Online Visualisation and Presentation of Archaeological Data

A Decentralised Web Edition Network for Archaeological Data

Since the 1960s, numerous attempts at building up standards and repositories were made in archaeology. All projects tended to collect as much data as possible and several independent databases existed with the same themes. The pitfalls of this centralised approach were addressed in the early 2000s with the development of the semantic web, ontologies, and linked open data technologies.

archeoViz is designed along the same line. Rather than collecting all data in the same place as in the centralised approach, archeoViz users create a particular instance of archeoViz for each dataset to visualise and communicate. These instances can be deployed on the server of their choice (e.g., shinyapps.io, huma-num, or any other institutional or personal server). Nevertheless, archeoViz can be used in four ways.

4 Operating Modes

The following figure presents the four different ways to use archeoViz with your data, from purely local (on the user’s machine), to purely remote, assuming or not data publication on third-party repositories.

The 4 ways to use archeoViz:

1. Local (green solid line): no internet connection required, the application and the data stay on the user’s computer. An R environment is needed to run the application.
2. Remote and dynamic (dashed line): an internet connection is needed, the dataset is loaded in the distant archeoViz application and is not saved when the user ends to interact with the app.
3. Remote and static with data publication on a third party service (black solid line): this is the best option in the perspectives of open science. The data set is published online and a distant archeoViz instance is “connected” to it. This can be done in two manners:
   • by publishing a file on a static repository (e.g. a CSV file on Zenodo), which is downloaded by the corresponding archeoViz instance
   • by deploying an online database and connecting an archeoViz instance to it (e.g. the “BDA” archeoViz instance is connected to the BDA PostgreSQL database).
4. Remote and static without data publication (blue solid line): the dataset is privately stored on the Shiny server. Users can interact with the application but are not allowed to download the dataset.

Dataflow and Reference

The following figure summarises the relationships between

• the instances of the archeoViz application
• the data repositories
• third-party applications
• indexing and documentation systems.

• Grey boxes: online applications (archeoViz, archeoViz portal, SEAHORS, archeofrag, Seriograph, explor, shinhyHeatmaply).
• White boxes: data repositories (Zenodo, tDAR, etc.) for datasets and programming code.
• Coloured logo: indexing and documentation systems (OpenArchaeo, HAL, Google Scholar, Base, Viaf, etc.).
• Dashed arrows: transfer of archaeological data.
• Solid arrows: references (metadata).

Metadata

The archeoViz instances deployed for particular datasets are references in the archeoViz Portal. Each instance is described with a set of metadata, including:

Indexation

All the archeoViz instances deployed about specific datasets are

• referenced in the archeoViz Portal
• mapped and searchable in the OpenArchaeo semantic web repository,
• referenced in the HAL scientific repository.

The HAL references propagate to other scholarly documentation systems, including Isidore Google Scholar, Base.

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