Why do We Need Geo­informatics Specialists and How to Use Them Correctly?

Nowadays, technologies propose vast variety of different solutions to all stages of archaeological research. Geoinformatics, for instance, became the necessary part of archaeology since the end of the last century. Geoinformational provision of excavations and research, together with photogrammetry and geospatial database tools proved to be incredibly efficient. However, qualified scientific approach requires systematic use of all available instruments. In order to avoid the chaotic and random use of digital tools, an archaeologist should implement a complex approach to the geospatial provision of any research. It means qualified and rational use of geospatial database, geoinformational systems and photogrammetry from the very beginning of research — on the stage of planning. Only considering all the issues — from the coordinate system choose to the database management system structure — scientist can obtain a high quality of archaeological data that must be accurate, complete, interoperable, unified and precise. The advantages of geospatial databases for archaeological researches comparing to instrumental geoinformational system or analogue data sometimes are still the issue for discussion, so their usability must be considered and proved. Dynamic changeability, use of third dimension and fuzzy logic operators, interoperability, adaptation possibilities and a capacity to include the non-spatial data are the most important of them. Besides, use of database management systems, constraints, query procedures and spatial and conditional selections make databases extremely useful for the data mining, analysis and visualization. The complex, systematic and rational use of the entire geoinfomatics toolkit is strongly recommended to provide a concurrent and efficient archaeological research.