THE HARRIS MATRIX DATA PACKAGE SPECIFICATION AND THE NEW INIT COMMAND OF THE PYTHON']PYTHON HMDP TOOL

This paper presents an update to an earlier proposal for a standardized open format for archaeological stratigraphy data, the Harris Matrix Data Package, and the accompanying software tool implementation. The update is two-fold: firstly, it aims at a clear separation between data format and the software tool, particularly by defining the data format in more detail and independently from the software used to create or analyze it; secondly, it introduces a new software feature that allows the creation of a new 'data package' from scratch. A third issue that was identified is the lack of tools for converting existing data to and from the Harris Matrix Data Package, but this issue is not dealt with in this paper.