Hi, my name is Gal, and I'm a PhD student from Israel. As for myself, I'm not an archaeologist, although my B.A degree consisted of major studies in Geography, and minor studies in Archaeology. After completing my M.A studies (focusing over the field of remote sensing and it's use for general mapping), I promised myself that in case I'll continue with my studies I'll try to corporate GIS (which I'm very familiar with from former jobs and studies) into the field of archaeology. GIS is for a long time for now part of many archaeologists toolbox, although its main application is still in the level of inter-site analysis, environmental relations between the site and it's environ, site location prediction as well as other area of interest. In other words, most of the volume of GIS based archaeological research is focusing over the analysis of the site or findings in relation with other or neighbor sites that shares the same chronological frame, or with environmental factors that influenced a certain aspect related to the site itself or its inhabitants. The theme of intra site spatial analysis using GIS is something that emerged only within recent years (for example, several sessions during the recent CAA (Computer Applications in Archaeology) conferences were dedicated to the potential of using GIS with site level archaeology). Intra-site spatial analysis will seek to find some pattern that is inherent in the findings themselves, their distribution within the site and their interaction with other excavated findings: Architecture, special findings (other from pottery for instance) etc. Just think of questions related to the vertical as well as horizontal distribution of the findings and the information gathered from such questions for solving stratigraphic problems. During my PhD studies I seek to use GIS methodologies, together with other methodologies originated from the field of data mining (a.k.a. Knowledge Discovery, Data Archaeology etc.), in order to analyze the excavated findings and than harnessing the knowledge extracted from such analysis for the benefit of the human expert, you, the archaeologists. My case study will focus over records gathered during the excavation of Tell es-Safi, known as biblical "Gath of philistine". This excavation, directed by Dr. Aren Maeir of the Martin (Szusz) Department of Land of Israel Studies and Archaeology at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, is one of the largest and important excavations in Israel these days. You can find further information about Tell es-Safi, at http://www.dig-gath.com. Does any of you familiar with the use of GIS for intra site spatial analysis? What about incorporating data mining into the archaeological data processing. Thank you for your time, Gal