The Harris Matrix has long been established as a core tool in archaeological stratigraphy and the single context recording system. Little has advanced on the computing side however since the release of BASP Harris, a closed source DOS program, over 25 years ago. While the matrix is used in daily archaeological practice, few people use specialist digital tools for this purpose, choosing instead to manually draw matrices using pen-and-permatrace, generic drawing packages, or even spreadsheets. Even once drawn, the matrix is often not used to it’s full potential in navigating or exploring the archaeological dataset, it remains a static object with no interaction with the underlying data or overlying presentation layer. Much of this is due to a number of inherent failings in the existing Harris Matrix software and their closed development models, but also in the state of graph drawing algorithms. This paper will examine the current state of Harris Matrix software, why they fail to meet the practical requirements of archaeologists and archivists, and present some interim results of ongoing research into developing new software tools, file formats, and drawing algorithms.
John Layt (L-P Archaeology)