Modernizing field research

Jennings is currently working on the Jericho Mafjar Project, focused on the Khirbet al-Mafjar site, which is located near Jericho in Palestine. Famed as one of the most important of the desert castles of the early Islamic period, the site is a vital monument in the history of Islamic archaeology, featuring a lavish palace and great bath, decorated with fine mosaics, elaborate stucco figures, stone sculptures and frescoes.

In addition to its beauty, Jericho Mafjar provides insights into life in the Jordan Valley in the 8th-11th centuries when Christians and Muslims lived as neighbors. In a rare collaboration, Palestinian and U.S. archaeologists are working on the site shoulder-to-shoulder. And, through FileMaker Go for iPad, the dig is modernizing archaeological recordkeeping.

New-world Solution for Old-school Archaeology

On-site at Jericho Mafjar today, researchers no longer need to carry heavy binders with sheets detailing finds from each wall. When researchers reach a new excavation unit, they take pictures using the built-in iPad camera, load the images directly into the FileMaker Go database on iPad, draw a quick sketch on top and import it. "Total documentation in minutes – boom!" says Anthony Lauricella, area supervisor for the project. "The FileMaker database – on iPad and in the office – now contains all the necessary data in one record."

FileMaker Go for iPad provides the flexibility to adapt on an as-needed basis.

The team has been able to modify or add fields – adding a yes/no radio button indicating the presence of re-used blocks as part of a wall’s construction, for instance. All the data about a wall or architectural feature is available in a click, making the information transparent to re-interpreters or future excavators. "And, by creating preset lists, available via drop-down menus, for everything from soil composition and coin types to historical phasing, we have been able to both speed things up significantly and introduce standardization in responses that better allows us to find patterns in the data," says Jennings."

FileMaker Go also helps in analyzing research, by making it easier to uncover the relationship between walls from different eras to explain the rise and fall of different civilizations and cultures within the city. To date, researchers have filled in over 1,000 records. Jennings says he cannot imagine how much time this would have taken without FileMaker Go for iPad, particularly in terms of keeping the relationships between walls updated on paper. Says Jennings, "FileMaker Go gives us a new-world solution for old-school archaeology. The trowel is still our most important tool for figuring out how the elements relate to one another – but having FileMaker Go in the field gives us a framework for organizing our observations and easily sharing them with other researchers around the world."