Dealing with legacy data - an introduction

In the Mediterranean region particularly, but by no means exclusively, there exist large datasets from previous excavations, published and unpublished, whose digitisation, spatial mapping and re-analysis can greatly facilitate investigations of social behaviour and changing environmental conditions. Added to this there are also archives of historical maps and excavation plans, whose digitisation and combination with these other archaeological data for digital analyses give us greater understandings of the past. This volume presents a number of projects that demonstrate the usefulness of digital environments for analysing such non-digital data. These projects use these 'legacy data' within true GIS, pseudo-GIS, or other digital environments to answer specific questions concerning social behaviour and particularly the social use of space. The articles discuss approaches taken to retrieve, format, and synthesise these data; to incorporate them with other recently collected and digitised data; and to analyse these large datasets. They also discuss the significance of spatial mapping to the specific aims of these projects. They include discussions on the various computer techniques used to collate and analyse these data, and on how digital environments facilitate the re-analysis of such data. [Introduction]