28th August 2012, 08:46 PM
barkingdigger Wrote:.... the true digital recording future for British Archaeology is open-source...I think that is right and many of us would love the time and resources to play with open source .....until we do Intrasis fits the bill, providing my employer is willing to foot the bill (and at the moment they are!!)
I'm not so sure that 'setting-up' Intrasis is that difficult. It does require some parameters to be set, but generic site recording fields can be set as a template and once set can be reused time and time again. No more complex really than page-setting a context sheet for the first time and then photo-copying subsequent copies......One of the major gripes I hear from users here in Norway is that Intrasis isn't suited to particular types of period sites, especially stone-age. Not sure that is really true...very few stone-age archaeologists in Norway have yet to embrace stratigraphic recording let alone GIS so that particular complaint seems to me to be fatuous!! There is also the arguement that somehow hand drawn plans and profiles are more 'accurate' than digitally captured drawing data and of course Intrasis does rely on digitally captured data. Again this is something I wouldn't agree with....
Intrasis does provide a much quicker turn around of data and I would argue one of its strong points is that data is processed on site during the excavation. This does lead to significant savings in post-ex time, but of course doesn't necessarily suit a funding system where the excavation and post-excavation are seen as separate tendering processes. It works better in a system where savings to the OVERALL budget can be achieved and not just in in singular parts of the budget. A tenderer who used Intrasis in the field would perhaps appear more expensive if judged just on the field budget alone......
With peace and consolation hath dismist, And calm of mind all passion spent...