GIS for Archaeology and CRM

As many of you many have read, in the past few days, Google has unleaded a number of improvements to their suite of tools. Google Earth is now redesigned in Beta 4 with the ability to display textures, Google Geo-Coding, Picasa has web albums, and KML upgraded to version 2.1. For in depth reviews of these changes, check out some of the links at the end of this post.

The purpose of this post is just to give a quick how-to on quickly displaying archaeological data and pictures by geotagging images in the new Picasa, creating a .kmz, and making it available to your colleagues or clients (new Google Earth EULA clearly state no commercial use). The process is quick simple, thanks to Google, and very quick.

Download the example .kmz here

To start with, I have a few photos of a dig site in South Eastern, Pennsylvania. I also have sketch-up models of the archaeological structural remains, and a model for the interpretation of the once standing structure. ( I have posted a little about making these models, but plan on a tutorial one day).

After downloading or upgrading to the new Picasa, your HD is scanned for photos, and you are ready to go. Find the photos you are interested in, select them, go to [Tools] -> [Geotag] -> [Geotage with Google Earth]. GE will open up and a large cross hair will be in the center of the screen. Navigate and zoom yourself to where your photo was taken (I had to click back to Picasa to see the little window which tells you the particular photo you are Geotagging).

Once located, click page to Picasa and “Geotag”. After a second, it will indicate that you are ready to geotag the next photo. Do this for all of your selected photos and click done. At this point, it will tell you that is is creating a .kmz of your photos. I was not sure where it saved this .kmz, so being lazy, I just right-clicked on the “temporary place” table of contents in GE and saved it as a .kmz in the folder I wanted it to. Now you have a .kmz file which uses your photos as the point icons, which are clickable for large images.
At this point, I brought in a model which represents the archaeological wall remains, extruded to show what is probably still underground. Combined with the photos, you can now see an archaeological interpretation complete with the photos of what it looked like in the filed. Better yet, it is georefferenced within its context. Zoom in, pan, tilt, to your heart is content. On top of this, I also included a model rendition of what the structure probably looked like. This model is based on archaeology, etchings, and maps. (by default it is turned off in the GE table of contents, go ahead and turn it on if you like).

This is a pretty quick example and even though it took me a few hours to make the Sketchup models, the Picasa Geotag part and .kmz creation took only minutes. I have not yet bothered to recreate the Sketchup models with textures, as GE Beta 4 now displays textures. Also, this process could have been faster, but running Flock Beta, GE 4 Beta, Picasa Beta, and Google Sketchup Beta all at the same time is quite a rough experience. A similar How-To for Picasa and GE can be found at ogleearth.com
I’m big into wanting people to see what I see as an archaeologist. It is a very secretive and data guarding profession. I want others to see a buried wall, and a 100 year old etching to make the same connections that I do. These new technologies make it easier by the day to share archaeological info and knowledge.

Check out these other blogs for current info on Googles redesigned products (Google 2.0? Has O’Reilly copyright that?):

OgleEarth

Google Earth Blog

Google Press Release

Google Maps Mania

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