2 NEAR EASTERN ARCHAEOLOGY 76:1 (2013) Trends, Tools, Techniques, and Trends, Tools, Techniques, and Forum Forum Taking Mobile Computing to the Field Samuel B. Fee, Washington and Jefferson College David K. Pettegrew, Messiah College William R. Caraher, University of North Dakota As our plane began its descent to Larnaka, Cyprus, the famil- iar request came from the cockpit to put away all electronic devices. I turned my head and peered down the aisle of the plane to see nine undergraduate students shutting down the iPads loaned to them for their month-long archaeological sojourn to the island. I closed the cover to my own tablet but not before touching the “submit” button in the archaeology app that we would be using in the field later that week. The Pyla- Koutsopetria Archaeological Project (PKAP) was going paper- less for its 2012 season of excavation at the Hellenistic site of Pyla-Vigla, and we were still working out the bugs in an experi- mental mobile application customized for data acquisition. Our decision to bring iPads to Cyprus marked an opportune moment. Samuel Fee was teaching a class on mobile applica- tions at Washington and Jefferson College and looking for some real test-bed cases, while David Pettegrew was taking students to Cyprus for a month of fieldwork, bringing with him thirteen iPads loaned by Messiah College for pedagogical trials. Teaming up to develop an experimental mobile applica- tion for fieldwork, we dedicated an iPad to each student for completing course assignments and reserved four devices for each of the excavation units under investigation. Like other archaeologists adopting mobile technology for field work in the last several years, our paperless field season marked an experimental trial that greatly affected our experience of the archaeological process. iPads and Archaeology The rise of mobile computing marks yet another stage in a half-century-long process of integrating computer technology into archaeological fieldwork. During this time, first personal computers and then laptops became staple features of archaeo- logical projects, but short battery life, tendencies to overheat- ing, and susceptibility to dust have always made them better tools for work in the lab than in the field. Small hand-held devices with a battery life of eight to ten hours and a solid frame impenetrable to dust solve some inherent difficulties of apply- ing computing devices for archaeological ends. The connectiv- ity of these devices enables uploading and backup of data from the trench and allows for easy sharing of archaeological data. The significant potential of custom application development has created a myriad of new possibilities for collecting data. It is perhaps not surprising that Apple’s marketing of the iPad in early 2010 corresponded to their immediate adoption by archaeologists. When the University of Cincinnati went “paper- less” in excavations at Pompeii in late spring of that year, they appeared on Apple’s website (2010) and made headlines (Ellis and Wallrodt 2011). The Pompeii Archaeological Research Project: Porta Stabia (PARP:PS) and the Pompeii Quadripor- ticus Project adopted off-the-shelf apps for data collection (FMTouch and later FileMaker Go, for interfacing with File- Maker Pro database), scaled drawing (iDraw), note taking (Pages), Harris Matrices (OmniGraffle), and even task manage- ment (Things). The project director, Steven Ellis, heralded the digital tablet as a revolutionary step in archaeological recording, providing a dynamic record of field work and creating immedi- ate access to data; John Wallrodt, Senior Research Associate at UC and the main force behind paperless archaeology, described the devices as “practically custom built” for archaeological work (Apple 2010). The revolutionary effect of tablets on the archaeological pro- cess has been questioned (Caraher 2011; Hopkins 2010), but a new community of digital archaeologists blogging about iPads is highlighting fundamental shifts in the nature of fieldwork. 1 Most commonly, tablet users have touted the improved work- flow enabled by digital data collection and significant time saving in postprocessing data. They have called attention to the iPad’s ability to describe, illustrate, image, and store data on a single device—replacing, in turn, paper binders, sup- porting documentation (e.g., field manuals), clipboards, and notebooks. Mobile Internet access has enabled archaeologists to upload data to the cloud both to ensure the preservation of information and to provide in-field access to records. Tablets provide a comprehensive and secure recording tool. Since Cincinnati’s pioneering project two years ago, research- ers have adopted the iPad in Poland (Gdansk Excavations), Italy (Sangro Valley Project), Cyprus (Athienou Archaeologi- cal Project, Pyla-Koutsopetria Archaeological Project), and the Palestinian territories (Jericho Mafjar Project), among others. Most of these projects have adopted off-the-shelf apps for their needs (for one archaeologist’s list, see Tan 2012), with the most common apps used for illustration, note taking, and data input. In our 2012 field season we used both commercial off-the- shelf apps and developed our own application, customized to