Originally posted by 08amczb 
He said he is an archaeologist, so making panoramas are not an option. Even the text is placed on the image to be surly not exchanged accidentally. (My wife is an archaeologist also.)
Yes, he indicated that he is an archaeologist, however he is looking for a wide angle lens (24mm or wider) with as little distortion as possible. Physics/optics enters in to this. As with any wide angle lens, you are going to get some sort of distortion. Going to a lens with a longer focal length that is not wide angle and either stitching via a shift lens or employing a linear technique is a reasonably accepted approach to acquire a "wide angle" view without the inherent distortion. This provides a non-distorted view - with a wide field of view, without the native wide angle lens distortion.
Panorama is a photography term. Mosaic, image mosaicing, Photomosaics, photogrammetry, linear slit photography, multi-viewpoint and image exploitation are other terms that are somewhat interchangeable that utilizes the same or very similar approaches. They are also utilized and accepted across a wide range of various scientific endevours.
Very few scholars were accorded access to the dead sea scrolls. Individual images of the small fragments were made to document, provide better access, and to preserve the scrolls. When the images of the various fragments were arranged in a linear order, so that they could be interpreted within their original context - the interpretation of the scrolls made a giant leap in progress, in terms of increased quality and speed. And, yes - I am oversimplifying here....
Stitching and/or mosaicing is able to be done with controls that will address various quality assurance concerns. In terms of quality of measurements, utilizing the same camera / sensor, concerns about the size, and orientation along with the type of pixels are negated.
You can stand back, in order to take a single image of say 40 feet of pictographs, or you can use a linear stitching technique, in order gain better resolution and definition, while maintaining size and contextual relationships across the entire subject matter, being imaged.
Stitching or mosaicing is already being used at a macro level in archaeology. Using LIDAR sensing technology, georeferencing and orthorectification - extraordinary large amounts of imaging information can be combined with in a GIS system to produce analysis and understanding not available previously.
This same technology is available at the micro level, to the individual archaeologist digging in the pit, wishing to record some visual information - with a context or size larger than an single individual image.
Post #15 by interested_observer
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