TIPZOO: a Touchscreen Interface for Palaeolithic Zooarchaeology. Towards making data entry and analysis easier, faster, and more reliable

Abstract

Zooarchaeological studies of fossil bone collections are often conducted using simple spreadsheet programs for data recording and analysis. After quickly summarizing the limitations of such an approach, we present a new software solution, TIPZOO, which uses a FileMaker touchscreen interface combined with R scripts and QGIS files. This tool was specifically designed for zooarchaeologists needs, and is freely available at http://tipzoo.cnrs.fr. In this article, the key features of TIPZOO are highlighted, and we present some of the tools developed in order to (1) simplify the use of recently published complex coding systems, (2) better control intra- and inter-analyst variation, and (3) allow faster and more reliable data entry, analysis and visualization in Palaeolithic zooarchaeology.