GIS for Archaeology and CRM

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.

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From Space Imagery, a provider of space and aerial remotely sensed images, comes a fun Flash map application which maps 13 of the world’s Ancient Observatories.

From Abu Simbel (wiki link) in Egypt to Uxmal (wiki link) in Mexico, the Ancient Observatories map application displays a zoomable/pannable high resolution images of a particular observatory accompanied by a text description of the sites history and significance. The images can be downloaded and are linked to their metadata source.
The logic of this application brings full circle some pretty interesting ideas about ancient and modern technology. Do you think we can learn more about ancient observatories from studying them from the celestial point of view. Perhaps my fascination is simply coming from the “Who’s watching the deceive” feeling of this application. Either way, it’s very cool and well worth a look.

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Although my blog “GIS for Archaeology” was not mentioned in the new GIS Monitor article, “GIS in Archaeology” I will be the better person and post about it anyway.

Pointed out by SlashGeo, the current issue of the GIS Monitor has an article focusing on the use of GIS in Archaeology. Stating that Archaeology is a perfect fit for the use of GIS, the article points out that Archaeology is the only humanity field to embrace GIS to a large degree. The material for this article is derived from a talk with Dr. Caverlee S. Cary from the Geographic Information Science Center at the University of California at Berkley. Dr. Cary and the GIS center have worked with archaeologists in the past and offered comments on how they see archaeologists using GIS.

GIS and archaeology are a perfect match, according to Cary, because linking attribute information to locations on the Earth’s surface “is exactly what archaeologists need to do when they are documenting a site. The core of archaeology is that you know exactly where on or in the ground any given object that has been discovered came from.”

One application that the article focuses on is the use of remotely sensed images in archaeology. Describing how aerial and satellite imagery is used for finding new sites, mapping known sites, and evaluating environmental conditions, Dr. Cary states that this application is new to archaeology. Although she is correct in here assertion of uses, Remote Sensing in archaeology has been around for nearly as long as remote sensing itself. Aerial photos have been a main stay of archaeological data from the beginning, as well, Landsat and other remotely sensed data has been brought into our work flow for 20+ years. I do not dispute that Dr. Cary is fully aware of the history of RS in archaeology (She is co-author to a paper on this topic at Berkley this week), but I want to give my readers an impression of the depth to its use.

My 2 cents

As suggested in my post on the Integration of GIS in Archaeology, Archaeologists have used GIS technology and techniques for quite some time. A single example would be the Computer Application and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology conferences that have been held since 1973. GIS like methods appeared in this conference in the early years and by the Early 90’s, it had become a stand alone topic.

In my job, we use GIS for many tasks from the management of historic resources, to sensitivity analysis, landscape modeling, 3D visualization, general cartography, scenario testing, and many more. Archaeology is a spatial discipline. We are taught from day one that once something is pulled out of the ground, it better be recorded well enough that in 100 years, someone can find that point on earth within a centimeter. Spatial accuracy is a hallmark of archaeology and a big reason why we jumped on the wagon so early. This is aside from the fact that we are nerdy bunch!

If anyone is interested to know more about he we use GIS in archaeology, give me a yell.

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From Space to Place

December 4-7, Rome Italy. The 2nd International Conference on Remote Sensing in Archaeology deadline for abstracts is just around the corner (May 30th). Along with the entitled topic of Remote Sensing, the issues covered by this conference run the gamut of technology used in Archaeology. Landscape, environment, ecosystem, image processing, virtual reality, 3D visualization, conservation, geophysics, photogrammetry, open source and Web-GIS are all topics fit for this conference.

“Sense of place is also sense of time, difference between space and place, between ‘global’ and ‘local’. The world process of globalization is removing places and multiplying spaces, reducing the cultural differences. In particular the dissemination of not-places, stations, hypermarkets, hotels, etc. risks to make uniform our perception, reducing what we perceive of the world to a few mental maps. Therefore we want to highlight one the fundamental tasks of remote sensing archaeology, namely, the capacity to use spatial technologies for recovering and identifying places and the sense of place in collaboration with the local communities.”

As described in this text from the conference abstract, the organizers intend to demonstrate how various technologies can be used to bring a sense of place back to archaeological data and interpretation. In my humble opinion, this is a fantastic goal and something that all archaeological technologists should be thinking about.

Being that a snow ball has a better chance in Death Valley than I do of making it to this conference; I hope that the proceedings will be offered online, as is the case with the 3D Imaging and Modeling conference in the previous post.

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