Twenty-Five Years of Archaeological Site Inventories in the Middle East: Challenges and Perspectives

The introduction and rapid spread of personal computers in the early 1980s had an effect on the way archaeological site inventories could be managed. The pioneering work conducted by the Department of Antiquities of Jordan and the American Center of Oriental Research resulted in JADIS, a FoxPro database, and revealed the potential of using smaller and less-expensive systems to handle databases of potentially unlimited size. Similar systems with updated hardware and software were developed in Israel, Lebanon, and later in Egypt and Qatar. This paper looks at the way various countries have approached documentation and inventorying of archaeological heritage and how they have responded to the evolution of technology and the availability of tools, such as the Internet and GIS.