Line drawings are a very simple form of illustration that can be found in almost every archaeological publication. Traditionally, original drawings get inked and, in the case of pottery drawings, compiled into a plate layout, which is then photographed or copied and scaled to fit the publication format. The drawbacks are well known: uneven lines, smudges, and loss of detail and definition in the scaling process.
Vectorizing original drawings eliminates these drawbacks. The digitized drawings can be used in a variety of programs, they can be scaled up or down with a few mouse clicks and the lines will still be crisp, format changes (line thickness, fill color or pattern) are easy, and they can be reused indefinitely.
Below are some examples of line drawings I did in Macromedia FreeHand (my favorite vector program):
