The 1999 field season of the Lahav Research Project at Tell Halif, Israel was designed to test newly applied digital methods of field recording and reporting, with the intention of better meeting the needs of middle eastern archaeology at the end of the 1990s.
Of the many new techniques and tools that were tested during the season, none proved more useful or enlightening than our customized visualization tool. The application provides researchers with three-dimensional views of the entire dig site, including terrain, dig areas, slices, and individual objects. The idea of allowing researchers to spin and browse the dig in real-time 3D was, at first, only an intriguing way of looking at the data. Yet, when used in the field while the dig was underway, the program became much, much more.

The visualization application has been lovingly dubbed "DigDug" after the classic arcade game of the 1980s. While this is not the "published" title we will refer to it by that name here and it will be renamed at a later date. DigDug has been written in C++ and OpenGL making use of direct calls into the dig's Access database. The program was written by John van der Zwaag of Concept House, Inc. under contract from the Cobb Institute of Archaeology/Mississippi State University.

Reporting responsibilities mark the other main problem this 1999 experimental season addresses. We have shown in previous work that modern digital communication devices permit archaeologists to report findings far more completely than ever before; in fact, in displaying the Persian and Iron Age figurines discovered in the 1992 and 1993 seasons on the DigMaster website, we made available to web browsers more than 5,000 color photographs and drawings and 84 QuicktimeVR object movies of the ceramic and stone figurines, something impossible except through digital and and electronic media. This DigMaster web publication project, however, occurred well after the seasons had ended. In the 1999 LRP field season, the attempt is to prepare basic excavation data and graphic representations of all artifacts, architecture, and field photographs while yet in the field, all of which will be made available, as far as possible, on a daily basis on this web page.

The benefits of this experiment in dissemination of LRP excavation data are several. First, if successful, we will have demonstrated the viability of rapid (nearly immediate) reporting. Colleagues and staff members not on location will see high resolution images of the excavation as it progresses and of the artifacts recovered in the excavation; we believe that the images will be sufficiently detailed to permit close study on monitor. Second, the numbers of photographs that can be contained and disseminated in digital format will have demonstrated the viability of "total publication," something not economically permitted in traditional publication.