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.

With a recording interface that balances the need for projects to customize without building from scratch, and with a synchronizing data management platform designed for maximum data integrity usable even where the internet is not an option, Kiosk is a robust, accessible, flexible tool that can support any scale of archaeological operations.

Open-source and with minimal need for hardware or technical expertise to run, Kiosk will work for you whether you are a graduate student running a one-summer survey project or the 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. Join our team!

• 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.

For more about Kiosk’s capabilities and why it is a tool to trust, see our “about” page.

Find us on GitHub.