Håkan Thorén
(National Heritage Board, Lund Sweden)
This paper discusses aims and problems during 15 years of software development at the Archaeological Excavations Department at the Swedish National Heritage Board. In the beginning the development was carried out by a couple of trigger happy boys that where equipped with a total station, a database and some scripts. During the time the work went more and more serious and today it has resulted in Intrasis, a GIS-based documentation system that has become the standard tool in Swedish archaeology. What has changed during time, what was pushing the development in the beginning and what is pushing our development today? In the beginning there where some semi-digital excavations every year. Today all our excavations, down to the smallest single trench, is documented with digital methods and techniques. This means that the whole staff must be able to use digital equipment. During the past fifteen years we have gone through this and a lot of other problems. Mostly the problems has been related to equipment, organisation, economy, etc. but they have changed a lot during time. The discussion of these problems gives a good explanation why Intrasis became what it is and perhaps gives an idea what it is going to be in the future.