archeoViz: an R package for the Visualisation, Exploration, and Web Communication of Archaeological Spatial Data

Abstract

archeoViz is an R Shiny application for the visualisation, interactive exploration, and web communication of archaeological spatial data (Plutniak et al., 2023;. It generates interactive 3D plots, 2D cross sections and 2D maps of archaeological objects and their refitting relationships, and display an interactive timeline of the work made in a site. Spatial statistics methods can be applied (convex hull, regression surfaces, 2D kernel density estimation) and data can be directly exported to other online applications to run other methods. This application is designed as the building block of a decentralised web edition network for archaeological data: 1) users can deploy archeoViz instances specific to their datasets on the server of their choice; 2) the archeoViz Portal, a companion online application, references and documents with metadata these archeoViz instances, increasing their discoverability and audience on the web, both for scientists and the general audience interested in archaeology. It can also be used as an educational resource to introduce learners to spatial analysis, data formats, reproducible workflow, open science, and computational archaeology.