Down here at ' assemblage central', we rather thought that, although you are most likely reading this through a Web browser of some kind and are therefore sitting at a computer which is hooked up to the Internet, we would provide some overall description of the wide range of software that the modern day archaeologist is expected to use. This ranges from the generic 'office' type software which many of us use from day to day, right through to the more specialised or 'vocational' types of software, such as Computer Aided Design and Geographical Information Systems. As well as describing what these various types of software do, I will try to highlight how they can be of specific use in archaeology.
Spreadsheets are remarkably common.
It could be argued that the emergence of PC based spreadsheet software in the late seventies was one of the major driving forces behind the rapid growth in popularity of 'personal computing' that has ensued since then. That explanation alone, I admit, is a tad abstract, and it is much easier to visualise a spreadsheet by seeing the real thing. Click here to see a screenshot from a typical spreadsheet package. Each one of the boxes formed by these rows and columns is known as a 'cell', and most importantly, each cell has a 'cell reference', which is like a grid co-ordinate describing the location of the cell within the sheet. In the example given, the Monthly Total for September is located in cell F14, that for October in G14 and so on.