Informatique et archéologie en France : les années 1980

Abstract

The 1980s were decisive for the spin-off of computer science in archaeology. Whether in the field or in the laboratory, the arrival of microcomputers was largely responsible for their generalisation. From the methodological point of view, these are the applications of documentary databases, the mathematical and statistical treatments for timecultural or spatial applications and finally field applications with archaeological information systems to manage excavation projects.These innovations have been made possible by preliminary developments in the field of methodology and theory: recording by context, analysis of relationships between contexts, the horizontal search approach and the spatialization of data at the intra-site scale, regional sampling, and large-scale geographic projects.Without these prerequisites, the adoption of computer tools would not have been so successful.Finally, current perspectives are linked to the development of digital archaeology and 3D technologies. They will most likely revolutionize the way we do and design archaeological data.

Keywords

• informatics
• data banks
• applied mathematics
• statistics
• archaeological information system
• digital archaeology