Interpolation of airborne LiDAR data for archaeology

•Airborne LiDAR data are an essential part of archaeological prospection.•Archaeology-specific data processing workflow is essential.•Interpolation is an important processing step that has a direct impact on the accuracy and visual performance of the digital elevation model.•Archaeology-specific visual performance assessment for six interpolators has been performed on European datasets.•Inverse distance weighting is the most suitable archaeology-specific interpolator.•Open source tool to calculate DFM confidence map in QGIS is included.