Kiosk

Kiosk is an integrated iPad recording platform and browser-based data manager for field archaeology – both excavation and pedestrian survey – developed and maintained at Brown University. It is designed to work in remote places, entirely independent of the internet.

With a recording interface that balances the need for projects to customize without starting from scratch, and a synchronizing data management platform designed for maximum data integrity, Kiosk is a robust, accessible, flexible tool that supports any scale of archaeological operations.

With modest requirements for hardware and technical expertise of those who operate it, Kiosk works as well for graduate students running a one-summer survey project as for a director of a legacy excavation with decades of old data to digitize while working in multiple simultaneous long-term trenches and conducting a field school. Already supporting fieldwork recording from Sardinia to Sudan, from Peru to Cyprus, Kiosk is also still growing and regularly adds features requested by its users. Let’s talk if you are interested!

• Choose how much customization you want: use out-of-the-box terminology and numbering systems, or configure your recording system to support your workflow and existing data structure.
• Wait, I can maintain my own archaeological numbering scheme? Yup. (Don’t know what that means or why it’s so cool? Click here.)
• Record field data without any connection to a network during recording. Survey units many kilometers apart with no cell service? No problem.
• Synchronize data without access to the internet – all season long.
• Seamlessly attach images to contexts – never hunt wildly for a photograph again when preparing a presentation or publication.
• Link contexts with relationships that produce Harris matrices.
• Quality control: designate priority fields to help your team collect all the data you expect them to.
• Conduct registration to keep tabs on the movement of artifacts and samples from collection through processing and storage.
• Integrate specialist modules you are already using, such as bespoke ceramics databases.
• Produce reports tailored for government accounting at the end of a season.
• Migrate your system from a local server to an online server for team member access and continued work with data when not in the field.
• Access the many advantages of natively digital tablet-based field recording without a software developer or tech specialist on your team, and without breaking the bank.

Find us on GitHub.