GIS for Archaeology and CRM

Google Earth Community user ATF strikes again with a wonderful textured and semi-transparent 3D model of King Tutankhamun’s tomb. The Google Earth model (available here) stands above the location where Howard Carter discovered the tomb entrance in 1922. While Google Earth does not yet have the ability to place models below the surface, this above ground rendition certainly gives you the impression. Once the model is loaded into GE, navigate through the layers of the model in the “Places” frame until you get to the various views of the burial chamber. These handy views position the camera at appropriate angels.

Following the King Tut theme, I recommend that anyone living in or traveling through the Philadelphia region check out the “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs” exhibit at the Franklin Institute Science Museum. This very well attended exhibit runs until September 30th 2007. Don’t forget to by your ticket ahead of time. There is also a King Tut Geocaching tour associated with the event!

I toured the exhibit last month and it was fantastic. I recommend purchasing the audio tour headphones. Although it seems like something that should be included, it is a nice companion. Besides, it helps to muffle the noise of the youngsters who have had their fill of ancient Egypt by the second room. I guess I can’t blame them. While the actual sarcophagus and burial mask of King Tutankhamen is not on display, a number of his personal burial items are. These include the canopic jar for his liver, gold necklace, and my favorite, his solid gold dagger. Very cool!

Thanks to Google Earth Blog for pointing out this new model!

Although I have read that the first rule of blogging is not to apologize for infrequent posting, I’ll do it anyway. With helping my fiance plan our wedding (10 days away!!!), the Tour De France, and the height of my racing season all coming together, plus a 9-5 work week, GIS and Archaeology has suffered. I guess it is good to give the blogosphere a small break from the controversial and tantalizing subjects of artifacts and computers

Posting will be back to previous standards in the near future.

And now, something completely different…

Having nothing to do with archaeology, I found this post/tutorial very interesting. From back in January (I think it made the rounds back then) Tom at Applefritter.com posted his technique for data mining Amazon.com wishlists to find the address of people asking for potentially “dangerous” literature. In his very interesting and cheeky post, Tom outlines a involved methodology to extract all 260,000 wishlists and ultimately create a Google Map of reader locations (for his post, he extrapolated the address locations to town centers).

If not just for the information on federal data mining and Tom’s take on it, this post is very intriguing. Following his technical methodology, Tom seems to be somewhat of a scripting MacGyver; quite impressive.

For an interesting diversion, check it out!

As part of the UK Archaeology Map, the folks at Online Archaeology have made available their catalog of United Kingdom archaeology data in KML format. Each of the layers represented on their map application, from World War era gun placements to 3rd century Roman Villas. In total, there are 287 Military sites identified and 278 Roman Villas. Also available on the UK Map catalog page are RSS links to each layers, an option to view it on their mapping application, and a link to a list of selected sources for further reading.

Deserving of a post of its own, the UK Archaeology Map is a very cool project. Based off the Google Maps API, the UK Archaeology map is in continual development with tools for increased usability and added data. Check out the Online Archaeology Map blog to track it’s developments and pick up a few hints of how the creator solved some of his mapping tasks.

Further adding value to the Online Archaeology site is an RSS aggregator for a number of archaeology and technology/archaeology news feeds. The interface is pretty slick, but it seems to be missing one super important GIS/Archaeology blog Online Archaeology’s section on “IT Archaeology” offers a bit of information on GIS and there is tons of other info to be found with some wondering around.

I am not really sure who is behind Online Archaeology, but it is a great project. The UK Archaeology Map they have created is a fine use of the Google Maps API combined with some added features for usability. The data presented is interesting and quite extensive (as far as archaeological sites published on the web goes). Take a few minutes and check it out!

Directed by Marc Waelkens, of the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, the dig at Sagalassos (wiki link) is a large-scale interdisciplinary excavation which began in 1990. Located in Southwest Turkey, Sagalassos is a very well preserved ancient city that has a history dating back to it’s growth before the conquest of Alexander the Great in 333 BC, to its transfer to king Amyntas in 25 BC, up to it’s final abandonment due to earthquakes and failing economy in the 7th century AD.

Featured as an “Interactive Dig” on Archaeology.org, the Sagalassos excavation is a fantastic example on using technology and well written text to bring archaeological digs, findings, and experiences to a wide audience. As part of the offerings at the Sagalassos, they have added a new KMZ network link to a Google Earth file documenting many aspects of the extensive excavation

KMZ of Sagalassos Archaeology
(link)

The Sagalassos KMZ file contains information about archaeological and architectural features, panoramic VR photo tours, overlain archaeology and geophysical maps, and links to field notes from throughout the project. In all, the Sagalassos KMZ contains a ton of interesting and informative media and links.

On first look, the KML displays an archaeological base map of the site and great custom “dig site” icons linked to multiple VR panoramas (which loads in a separate browser window), a photo, and often extensive field notes. Viewing the panoramas, from which you can zoom and pan, you get an incredible sense of what it looks like on site. Also, zoom out in Google Earth and tilt/pan with the terrain on. The landscape of the site, in the Taurus mountains, is very impressive.

In the Northeast area of the Sagalassos project, there is a georeferenced image of the composite geophysical survey findings. By turning off the top most map overlay and adjusting the transparency of the geophysical overlay, you can get a great appreciation for how complex the subsurface archaeology is at Sagalassos. As an armchair geophysicist, you can see detailed subsurface structures directly to the East of the Theater and about 30 meters to the West and Southwest. It looks like the dig team will have plenty more to work on in future seasons.

The links to the field notes bring you to the archaeology.org virtual dig page which includes field notes as well as pictures and some technical drawings of structures from that portion of the site. Heading back to the main page of the Sagalassos interactive dig, you can also find a journal of daily life around the dig site. These are interesting journal entries about the non-archaeological side of spending days in the field.

The archaeology.org interactive dig site gives the reader a load of great info about the site, the archaeology, and the team, but the inclusion of the Google Earth KMZ brings it all together. The place based presentation of the archaeology offer us a context to frame the data and experiences of the project. Further, users can now explore the site on their own via the map and panoramas and even find unexcavated archaeology by interpreting the geophysical results. Providing visual media such as this to a wide audience of specialists and non-specialists, and everyone in between, will certainly draw more attention to the importance of archaeology and allow viewers to share some of the same adventure and excitement as the archaeologists.

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

If the stat that 20% of the world has access to the Internet is correct, then you can now share your GIS data with ~1.1 Billion people very quickly.

Yesterday, Google announced a number of amazing changes ranging from a new redesigned beta version of Google Earth to an updated version of the KML (2.1) language. So as not to repeat what many have already said, check out the recent posts at Ogleearth blog for great coverage. My intention here is to talk about just one aspect of the new changes, the ability to display KML files in Google Maps.

KML (Keyhole Markup Language) is an XML language that is used to encode geographic information (points, lines, polygons, images, models) for use with Google Earth. With the new changes in KML 2.1, this same information can be viewed in Google Maps. The interface between Google Maps and KML 2.1 could not be more simple! In the search bar of the maps.google.com window, simply type in the URL of the KML file you want to display and voila!

So you don’t have any KML files, but you want to publish your data in Google Maps. If you have ArcGIS, GIS data, and some sort of web space (I use Bluehost.com), it is fast and simple. By using one of two products, the KML Home Companion or Export to KML, both VB scripts for ArcGIS 8.X - 9.x, GIS data can be written to KML files in seconds. Later, I will discuss the limitations of this process.

Here is a quick example. First, I downloaded publicly available data from the Delaware State Historic Preservation office. The data set consisted of a point file for the National Register of Historic Places Listed Structures for all of Delaware and a Polygon file of National Register Listed Historic Districts. These data are in Delaware State Plane coordinate system, but both KML export routines will reproject on the fly as long as the data is attributed correctly. I took a subset of these files; Google Maps can only handle so much data, but I have not found what the threshold is yet.

By using the simple export tools (each does things slightly differently, you’ll see which works best for you) the KMLs are written and simply FTPed to my web server. The process honestly takes less than 30 seconds. From here, go to maps.google.com and cut/paste the URL of the file on your server and there you have it. Here is my quick example: http://www.gisarch.com/kml/NR_pnts1.kml and http://www.gisarch.com/kml/NR_dist2.kml (cut and paste links into search bar of Google Maps page, or use these links if you like skipping steps: points, polys). From here, you can also click the “link to this page” text and grab the URL that points directly to your new Google Maps (”Link to this page” example). Taking it a step further, take your new URL and stick it in www.tinyurl.com to shrink it and come back with http://www.tinyurl.com/fm8vl as your new Google Map URL. When exchanging data with those in the know, all you need to do is tell them to go to “fm8vl“. How cool is that? Maybe a small stretch, but hey, why not? (note: the Tinyurl trick worked most of the time, but failed here and there)
What if you want to see both data set? Hack the KML! Use a text editor (I like HTML-Kit) to cut and paste the geometry from one into the other and you can now see the NR points and Polygons in the same map (example: http://tinyurl.com/j2t2d). I had to trim the points to make the map load, but you get the point.

As you have seen, some of the features do not have the name attribute correct and the points symbols differ. This is due to the differences between KML home companion and Export to KML. Export to KML plainly lets you set the field to have as the name for each feature, but for KML Home Companion, it is not as apparent. I will have to look a little further to find what I am missing. Also, Export to KML would changed some of the more complex and small polygons to points during the export, whereas KML home companion exported every poly with no complaints. The output text is not the same for each script, but they can be hacked together.

I know this is a pretty low tech and minor example of how this new feature can be used, but as far as I am concerned, it is an amazing step in opening the door to allowing more people to share geographic data. With a process as simple as this, open data, export, FTP, and view, we should see a whole new lot of Google Map creations coming through the door.

The experimentation continues!!!

In a very similar fashion of the Google Earth “King Tut’s Tomb” model posted last week, Google Earth Commuity user “aft” has created a semi-transparent version of the Great Pyramid of Giza complete with tunnels and burial chambers. This model is constructed in the same ‘box-model’ style as King Tut’s Tomb in osrder to show the underground aspects of the pyramid without buring them under the terrain. Taking this a step further, aft adds transparency to the pyramid so that you can see the interworkings.

The techniques used by aft are great for showing hidden geometry and negative space. This technique is pretty well suited to archaeology but can certainly be used for a ton of other applications (test holes, geophysial data, etc…)

Use the different “views” provided with the model to get a good look at what the Great Pyramid of Giza has to offer.

Thanks to Google Earth Blog and OgleEarth for posting this earlier.

The Bosnian Pyramid [site link, GE Link ] finally got a Google Earth model. I guess when visual suggestion is the only evidence in your favor; you use all the tools in the shed. (please pardon the cynicism)

If you are unfamiliar with the topic, the Bosnian Pyramid is the latest and greatest of Indiana Jones meets the Underwater World of Atlantis archaeological mysteries. Headed by Sam Semir Osmanagich, a Bosnian native Texas businessman, the government backed 5 year excavation seeks to prove that the 700 foot hill towering over the town of Visoko, Bosnia (43.98889, 18.17806), is indeed the world’s largest manmade pyramid.

According to Osmanagich, the truth is self evident and undeniable. According to the vast majority of archaeologists, in both Bosnia and elsewhere, the pyramids are a hoax of mammoth proportions. The evidence presented by Osmanagich and his team consists of the pyramid like shape of Visocica Hill and the “man made” blocks that have been found through relatively shallow excavations. He supports this claim with the backing of “leading” geologists and archaeologists. Against Osmanagich are geologic studies demonstrating that the shape of Visocica is defined by faulting and uplift; very common geologic processes. Furthermore, world archaeological history offers no evidence for such monumental architecture at this place and time, as well as, a lack of archaeological artifacts from the excavations. Osmanagich likes to compare his pyramid to those of Central and South America, but compare the typical artifact assemblage of a large pyramid on the Yucatan Peninsula to that of Visoko and it is entirely clear that these are not the same thing.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not a hater of anything that goes against the grain. I am not discounting this because it is the cool thing to do. And I do support the nationalistic sense of hope that this is providing many Bosnians, but the evidence simply is not there. I have read the geologic reports that are provided by Osmanagich and they do not in any way provide any geologic evidence for the possibility of a non-natural structure. Saying that something looks “man made” is not geologic support.

Time will tell whether Osamagich’s excavations turn out to be a wild goose chase or the next wonder of the world. If it turns out to be the latter, I am all for it, but at this point, the evidence is nil. Until then, decide for yourself. Check out the Google Earth model of the pyramid and the other Google Earth overlays provided at the excavation’s site.

At the end of last week, the Google Earth Blog wrote about a ver cool KML of the tomb of Tutankhamen. The underground tomb is designed with a very cool box model technique. Frank Taylor at the GEB has posted a good deal on the use of techniques such as this in Google Earth. Notably, Frank points to the work of Valery Hronusov from Russia’s Academy of Science in Perm. Valery has created a set of tools to integrate GIS data with Google Earth. From a look at the institute’s site and example projects, the software (KMLer) looks very powerful and quite affordable.

Back to Egypt… After reading the GEB post about the tomb of Tutankhamen model, created by ‘atf’ at the Google Earth Community, I went on a small hunt for other Egyptian archaeological KML examples.

There are a number of renditions of the Pyramids at Giza. Most that I have seen are pretty general and not at the proper elevation. Though, this model that only contains the Pyramid of Khfare is quite detailed and correctly placed.

Of course no Great Pyramid is complete without a Great Sphinx. This model is a low polygon rendering of the sphinx.

Also, here is a great model of the Lighthouse of Alexandria. This lighthouse is estimated as having stood nearly 450 feet tall. For many millennia, this was the tallest structure on earth. This world wonder was constructed on the island of Pharos just off the coast of Alexandria, Egypt. Underwater archaeology is still going on today to try and solve the mystery of where the lighthouse precisely stood and how it met its demise.

Keep and eye on the Google Earth Community for more Egyptian models as well as numerous place marks and imagery overlays of Egyptian sights both past and present.

Photo Credit: http://www.bosnianpyramid.com/

What are the chances of the world’s tallest man-made pyramid being found in Visoko, Bosnia-Herzegovina? Well, according to the data and available studies on the BosnainPyramid site, at least somebody believes it. Although, the intention of this post is not to support or debunk the authenticity of this find, but instead, just to point out an example of a project (albeit off-beat) using Google Earth maps and links, as well as, a blog’ish publication scheme to produce data that can be accessed by many and, in this case, be swept up into a media whirlwind.

(This article from Archaeology Magazine will give the stance that many professionals take on this issue)

A little background on this site tells quite an interesting story. The 2,120 ft peak of Visocica, towering over the small town, has been noted for its four sided geometric shape long before the recent excavations. Stories going back the 14^th century describe a hidden subsurface structure that once housed the Bosnian king, Tvrtko of Kotromanic. Much more recent reports include the uncovering of engraved building blocks and other faced stones in the constructions of roads and a foundation.

In comes Semir “Sam” Osmanagic, a Texas businessman with an appetite for the weird and wonderful aspects of “archaeology”. Semir, of Bosnian descent, has believed for 15 years that Visocica is the location of the world’s largest man-made pyramid. Now, with a government supported 5 year excavation and a swell of nationalistic pride in his court, Mr. Osmanagic seeks to prove to the world that he has found what he promised. Brushing aside the pleas and claims to halt excavation, by well established archaeological professionals, Mr. Osmanagic presses on.

The website dedicated to the Bosnian Pyramid Archaeological Park, with a clean 3-column design, provides updated content, stories, relevant research aspects (geology, remote sensing, etc…), and a section of maps and KLM downloads ( Sun Pyramid). Fitting well with the Indiana Jones feel to this project, the Google Earth links quickly transport the viewer to the location of the alleged pyramid. Also, there are links to other “pyramids” and a rubbersheeted topo map that gives a decent indication of the topography. How long before someone places a Google SketchUp model on the spot?

Although the technology is nothing fancy and the presentation is simple, the 595 views of the pyramids GE placemark on the keyhole site is probably more looks, virtual or actual, than most archaeology sites will ever see. Certainly, it is the highly controversial and compelling story that created the media frenzy around this “find”, but the availability of data in the form of flying into and around GE placemarks and raster overlays helps get the point across.