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More Free Tools

Mark Bouck (mabo-du) develops a wide range of open-source tools for archaeologists, historians, and heritage professionals. Below is a list of other free, public applications and libraries that you might find useful:

🏛️ Archaeological Data & Excavation

  • HOARD: Heritage Object and Artifact Research Database — an AI-assisted archaeological pipeline for document ingestion, OCR, analysis, and report generation.
  • trowel: Transforms digital excavation data into compliance-ready archaeological reports. Upload your context records, finds catalogues, and sample logs to get a professionally structured draft report in seconds.
  • stratigraph: A Modern, AI-Ready Harris Matrix Generator & Digital Heritage Hub.
  • acta-523: Free, open-source DPR 523 compliance form builder for CRM archaeology. Generates SHPO-ready PDFs offline.
  • dibble: Digital Image-Based Benchmark for Lithic Evaluation (photogrammetry + 3D lithic analysis).

🔬 Geomatics & Scientific Dating

  • lidar-relief-qgis-plugin: A QGIS Processing plugin for advanced archaeological terrain visualization from Digital Elevation Models (DEMs).
  • rubipont: A high-performance Rust library and CLI tool for lossless conversion between major LiDAR point cloud formats.
  • libby: Modern radiocarbon calibration with LLM-powered narratives, Bayesian modelling, and GIS curve selection.
  • fritts: An open-source desktop dendrochronology tool for tree-ring cross-dating, measurement, and master chronology building.
  • IsoMap: A desktop application that automates the standardisation, validation, and export of legacy isotopic and paleoecological datasets for submission to centralised repositories (Neotoma, IsoArcH).

📜 Archives & Oral History

  • lore: A desktop application designed for historians, archivists, and researchers providing state-of-the-art AI transcription, speaker diarization, named entity recognition, and translation—100% offline, on your own hardware.
  • cartulary: Spreadsheet to EAD3 XML Finding Aid Converter.

💻 Developer Tools

  • heritage-types / heritage-cli: Core infrastructure and types for the heritage software ecosystem.
  • pluck: Paste a git URL, auto-detect the install method, auto-install, and you're done!