The Giza Plateau Mapping Project Excavation Database
Giza Plateau · 2004
The Giza Plateau Mapping Project which operates large-scale excavations in Cairo/Egypt is managing invaluable datasets about the building of the Pyramids of Giza. For its archives an initiative was founded to develop practical solutions for disseminating, archiving and preserving the collected information. Four key points were paramount to the development of a centralized database: low cost, fl exibility, security and easy access. The internet was chosen as a platform to transport information between the members of the international research team. To keep costs down, open source software was employed featuring the operating system ‘Linux’, the object-relational database ‘PostgreSQL’, ‘Apache’ web server, the scripting languages ‘PHP’ and ‘JavaScript’. Forged together, a fl exible and secure web-driven database was developed integrating all archaeological datasets from the Giza Plateau Mapping Project archives.