EVOLUTION OF SURVEYING PRACTICES IN ARCHAEOLOGY: A TECHNICAL OVERVIEW TO INTRODUCE NEW MANAGEMENT POSSIBILITIES FOR CULTURAL HERITAGE DATA

Especially in archaeology, a mission of the surveyor is to acquire and to work on data generated by an experimentation field, i.e. to locate natural elements or human constructions, and to represent them (analogically or digitally). Surveying work has always been part of field archaeology, because the knowledge and expertise of the surveyor can be as useful for the prospecting stage as for the excavation. However surveying practices carried out in archaeology could change, and the surveyor could be proved helpful for the use of excavated data too. The purpose of this paper is to summarize how topographical techniques are used by the archaeologists, and to present the evolution and potential of computer developments, especially regarding data management. Historically, a number of cartographic tasks in archaeology was taking care of by the surveyor, e.g. cartography of excavation fields, absolute positioning of distinct sites, aerial prospecting, study of old maps and archive images, levelling, etc. Today, the archaeologist makes more and more the field surveys himself, however the role of the surveyor could change in the future. He will be able to help the archaeologist in his data exploitation work as well. The new expertises of the surveyor, e.g. Databases and Geographic Information System (GIS), allow him to handle different kinds of data efficiently. These knowledge should be interesting for the archaeologist, both in simplifying data management and in developing novel techniques for presenting the resources. Moreover, to have an overview of all dat