SEAHORS

Spatial Exploration of ArcHaeological Objects in R Shiny

• Presentation
• Installation
• Demonstration and tutorial
• Example data set
• Interoperability
• References
• Major news

Presentation

SEAHORS is a R Shiny free open-source application that makes the exploration of the spatial distribution of archaeological objects fast and easy. Its main goal is to make the two and three-dimensional spatial analysis of archaeological data as user-friendly as possible. This is intended to lower the barrier for users who are not familiar with GIS and R.

SEAHORS has an easily accessible interface and uses text and Excel files (CSV and XLS respectively). The application includes functions to merge several databases, for example when spatial data and analysis data are stored in separate files.

The application is demonstrated online here.

It can generate five types of plots:

1. 3D plots
2. 2D plots
3. 2D density plots
4. plots generated by slicing the points cloud
5. plots generated by modifying the angle of projection to explore spatial organisation without constraint of the grid orientation.

SEAHORS has visualization tools with several sorting and formatting keys (colours) applicable to coordinates and all possible analysis variables (i.e. levels, splits, analytical attributes).

Installation

• Install R and optionally Rstudio Desktop to have a more comfortable R environment.
• Install SEAHORS from CRAN:

install.packages("SEAHORS")

or

• Install the SEAHORS development version from github:

# install.packages("devtools")
devtools::install_github("AurelienRoyer/SEAHORS")

Load the package and launch the SEAHORS application:

library(SEAHORS)
SEAHORS()

Demonstration and tutorial

• An demonstration instance of the SEAHORS application is deployed and available online.
• An overview of the functionalities is published in the Royer et al. 2023.
• A tutorial video of SEAHORS is available in English and in French.

Example data set: the Cassenade Palaeolithic site

The SEAHORS comes with an embedded example data set, from the Cassenade Palaeolithic site (France).

• Spatial data: https://nakala.fr/10.34847/nkl.e30aie2u
• Refit: https://nakala.fr/10.34847/nkl.fe27j10z
• Orthophoto: https://nakala.fr/10.34847/nkl.7ea78e6u

Interoperability

To improve the interoperability between archaeological software, SEAHORS can export data to the format required by the [archeoViz](https://analytics.huma-num.fr/archeoviz/en/) application. Two options are available in the Table tab, archeoViz exports sub-tab:

• “Export your data in archeoViz format”: to download your data as a CSV to upload in the archeoViz application.
• “Directly send your SEAHORS data to archeoViz”: this opens a new window, launches the archeoViz application, and immediately load your data.

References

• Royer, A., Discamps, E., Plutniak, S., Thomas, M. 2023. “SEAHORS: Spatial Exploration of ArcHaeological Objects in R Shiny”. PCI Archaeology #320, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.7674699.
• Royer, A., Discamps, E., Plutniak, S., Thomas, M. 2023. “SEAHORS. Spatial Exploration of ArcHaeological Objects in R Shiny”, R package, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.7664191, https://cran.r-project.org/package=SEAHORS
• Royer, A., Discamps, E., Plutniak, S., Thomas, M. 2023. “SEAHORS: Spatial Exploration of ArcHaeological Objects in R Shiny”. Peer Community Journal, 3, n°e55, DOI: 10.24072/pcjournal.289.

Major news

• 12/2023 : addition of a "Bar plot display" in the "advanced 2D plot" panel, to obtain an histogram of selected points per levels and nature.
• 01/2024 : addition of two buttons "save" and "load" in the sidebarpanel, allowing to save and load settings and/or data.
• 01/2024 : addition option in "figure options" panel to expand limits of X and Y for "simple 2D plot" projection.
• 01/2024 : modification of the button "options for loading file" in the "import XYZ data" panel and addition of a numeric imput modifying the number of significant digit when the data are imported.
• 14/05/2025 : bug with refits fixed