ABSTRACT
Archaeology can be practiced as a modern science. The term open source was introduced to express the same technical idea but avoid the moralistic undertones of the Free Software Foundation that have come to be perceived as 'evangelical' by some of the movements stakeholders. Some of the disciplines greatest innovations derive from its overlap with other scientific fields, including DNA analysis, dendrochronology, provenance analysis, geophysical surveying, agent-based models, and Geographical Information Science (GIS). Modern software development uses a high-level approach based on human readable, heavily structured programming languages such as C, C++, Java, and Python. The Software Freedom Law Center provides legal advice to the open source community on matters regarding the design of open source licenses. As regards spatial analysis in archaeology, particularly involving GIS-based analysis, have largely been driven by a technology-first attitude that has left its propagators little time to ensure sustainable, good scientific practice.
