IOSA.it Open Archaeology

User-friendly Desktop Internet GIS. UDIG is an open source spatial data viewer/editor, with special emphasis on the OpenGIS standards for internet GIS, the Web Map Server and Web Feature Server standards.

This site represents an attempt to build a complete index of Open Source / Free GIS related software projects. The effort has some way to go, especially for projects in languages other than English. The definition of GIS has been kept loose to encompass a broad range of projects which deal with spatial data.

GpsDrive is a car (bike, ship, plane) navigation system. GpsDrive displays your position provided from your NMEA capable GPS receiver on a zoomable map, the map file is autoselected depending of the position and prefered scale. Speech output is supported if the "festival" software is running. The maps are autoselected for best resolution depending of your position and can be downloaded from Internet. All Garmin GPS reveiver with a serial output should be usable, also other GPS receiver which supports NMEA protocol.
GpsDrive is written in C with use of the GTK+ graphic toolkit and runs with Linux and FreeBSD.
It allows you to import and georeference topographical maps, to upload tracks and waypoints from different GPS recievers like Garmin or Maghellan, and to navigate with all standard GPS-tools (Bearing, heading, speed, altitude,...).

A LinuxJournal article by R. Kludt and Markus Neteler

A description of an archaeology project making use of the freely available geographic information system GRASS.

PostGIS adds support for geographic objects to the PostgreSQL object-relational database. In effect, PostGIS "spatially enables" the PostgreSQL server, allowing it to be used as a backend spatial database for geographic information systems (GIS),  much like ESRI's SDE or Oracle's Spatial extension. PostGIS follows the OpenGIS "Simple Features Specification for SQL" and has been certified as compliant with the "Types and Functions" profile.

The Open Geospatial Consortium, Inc. (OGC) is a non-profit, international, voluntary consensus standards organization that is leading the development of standards for geospatial and location based services. Through our member-driven consensus programs, OGC works with government, private industry, and academia to create open and extensible software application programming interfaces for geographic information systems (GIS) and other mainstream technologies. Adopted specifications are available for the public's use at no cost.

This is a presentation by A. Bezzi, et al for CAA 2004 (PDF - 4.6 Mb).
It describes very well how to perform every single step of archaeological research using open source software. It's worth reading even tough you will find weblinks in our directory for most of the software here mentioned.