The Case for Digital Site Reports

Publishing final excavation reports has been the ultimate goal of most archaeological projects since the early days of archaeology. The first publication that we would recognize as a final excavation report of a site within ASOR’s geographic scope is A Mound of Many Cities; Or, Tell el Hesy Excavated (1894) by American archaeologist Frederick J. Bliss. After training with Flinders Petrie, who directed excavations at Tel el-Hesi for an eight-week season in 1890, Bliss took over the Hesi project in 1891–1892. As Rachel Hallote (2006: 117) notes, Bliss essentially invented the excavation report format since, at the time of his writing, there were no reports of this type (Petrie’s report of his 1890 excavations was promptly published in 1891 by the PEF but is only sixty-two pages long). In addition to eight chapters authored by Bliss, A Mound of Many Cities contains four specialist reports on the Amarna letter found at the site in 1892; the metal objects; teeth; bones; shells; and flints. Although Bliss set the standard for this style of reporting and many adopted this approach in later years, “his pioneering efforts went unappreciated” (Hallote 2006: 117).