New digital technologies have been a boon to archaeological field recording as attested by the growing literature on the use of mobile devices, GIS, satellite imagery, and other digital tools. However, in many cases, the speed at which new field technologies are advancing are outpacing the tempos of publication, such that articles discussing the use of specific hardware or software packages are nearly out of date by the time an article comes out. This is particularly true of commercial software tools that can change at the whims of corporate goals and marketing strategies.

A good case in point is a piece I recently co-authored in Advances in Archaeological Practice, Lindsay & Kong 2020, on the use of Esri’s ArcGIS Collector app for site survey in the South Caucasus. The piece emerged from several seasons of using Collector on archaeological survey, starting in 2014 when there were still very few experienced users to consult as I worked to develop the user and desktop side of the data pipeline while my co-author, Dr. Nicole Kong, worked on the enterprise server side. In the process, we got to know the Collector pretty well, and hope the article makes life a little easier for those considering it for their own field operations.

While the article itself was published just a few month ago, there are already some notable updates to the article worth highlighting for those considering incorporating Collector into their survey workflows. Among the more consequential upgrades to the app’s functionality (for me at least) is the ability to collect points in a wide range of coordinate systems. As I lamented in the article, during my 2014-17 survey Collector only acquired data in decimal degrees while the rest of our project’s MySQL database stored UTM coordinates, requiring an online conversion process that team members had to undertake each evening. Though we had coded an automated workaround by the end of the survey, I was happy to see the added flexibility built into the app at the user end.

It will also be worth paying attention to upcoming structural changes to Esri’s suite of mobile GIS apps, which Esri naturally chose to announce during the final review stages of my Collector piece. In late June 2020, as I was reviewing the page proofs, my iPhone tipped me off that the name of the app at the center of my article had abruptly changed from “Collector for ArcGIS” to “ArcGIS Collector”. A few panicked emails to Esri confirmed that they were indeed reformatting the names of all of all their mobile apps ahead of their annual User Conference in July—the Collector team had apparently just jumped the gun and pushed the app update in June. Lucky for me. This resulted in some quick and timely find/replace edits in the proofs. More importantly, however, this shift is part of a larger corporate transition where Esri’s mobile apps are being moved under the umbrella of a new mobile platform they are rolling out called ArcGIS Field Maps. They will continue to support Collector into the immediate future, but all of the functionality of Collector, ArcGIS Survey 123, and ArcGIS Explorer will be folded into Field Apps.

Collector, however, is just one of many options in the mobile app market, and it is well worth the time mining social media channels and podcasts to find and communicate with users across the range of platforms. As I noted in the article, the ArchaeoTech podcast (hosted by Chris Webster and Paul Zimmerman) and related Facebook group, Archaeo Field Techs, are good places to start, as are more general mapping and GIS-related blogs and podcasts, such as MapScaping, that can provide helpful tech discussions around mobile data collection and management. In short, while publications on these technologies provide useful overviews, there’s really no substitute for engaging with folks who’ve used them in the field to get a timely, warts-and-all perspective about real world operating conditions, learning curves, reliability, sustainability, interoperability, and associated costs.

The article Using the ArcGIS Collector Mobile App for Settlement Survey Data Collection in Armenia is currently free to access.

Ian Lindsay is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Purdue University. He studies the origins of complex societies among Bronze Age hillforts in the South Caucasus as co-director of Project ArAGATS, a long-standing international collaboration with multi-disciplinary scholars from the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography of the Republic of Armenia, Cornell University, NYU/Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His interests also extend to the use of remote sensing, GIS, and photogrammetric techniques and a critical engagement with how these new digital data collections methods are impacting archaeological practice.

Follow him on Twitter – @IanC_Lindsay