Part of the ArchAtlas project is to provide a spatial reference database for archaeological sites, objects, chronologies, and cultural features from the past. The priority is to explain (spatially or conceptually) those archaeological items referred to in the visual essays published in the ArchAtlas Journal, and thus create a small but illustrated, inter-linked and narrative-rich digital atlas of the ancient world.

Between 2004 and 2010 ArchAtlas focussed primarily on Sites Mapping, finding accurate co-ordinates for archaeological sites, making available databases and gazetteers of archaeological sites digitally, and where relevant, linking the database to the visual essays in the Journal, through the OpenAtlas.