Survey and GIS Manual

ANEJOS DE AESPA LIX

This article presents an overview of the development, since 1998, of mapping and navigation methods and techniques for the field walking surveys conducted by teams from the Groningen Institute of Archaeology several times each year in central and southern Italy. The main drive has been towards higher accuracy, higher resolution mapping methods, using highly portable equipment under increasingly difficult conditions. Although our teams have made the decision to use the off-the-shelf ArcPad software in 2005, most methodological development has taken place using the shareware FieldMap system produced at the University of Kent (GB). The development of FieldMap’s archaeological functionality in 2001-2004 was described in a conference paper by Ryan and Van Leusen, presented at the CAA 2005 conference in Tomar, Portugal, but has remained unpublished until now (see Appendix).

Fennema, K & Kamermans, H. 2004 Making the connection to the past CAA 99: Computer applications and quantitative methods in Archaeology. Proceedings of the 27th conference, Dublin, April 1999. Leiden University., 2004

A 'Common Archaeological Grid System' is proposed as a survey design template for large-scale multidisciplinaiy projects. This system includes a number of novel procedures to streamline the collection, processing and management of survey data. The procedure requires that all archaeological surveys be aligned to Ordnance Survey National Grid to ensure the exact correlation of all datasets and enable data-values to be more easily assigned positional coordinates. Data in this 'xyz' format is compatible with most graphical applications and Geographical Information Systems (GIS). The strength of the common archaeological grid system lies in its data management potential, enabling individual filenames to contain both descriptive and location information. This in turn can facilitate the archiving of survey data and enable the integration of survey data from diverse, unrelated projects in a GIS environment. The common archaeological grid system, therefore, has potential implications for the establishment of a 'National Archaeological Data Archive'.

A. Krek, O. Bender, A. Vassilopoulos, N. Evelpidou (eds.), Geoinformation technologies for geocultural landscape analysis: European perspectives (London 2008) 35-46

This chapter discusses an implementation of a low-cost solution in archaeological research concerning the on-site data input of geographical information in a GIS by means of a handheld computer equipped with GPS, i.e. using mobile GIS and FDA (Field Digital Data Acquisition) methodology. The main advantage of this methodology is to avoid the degradation of the information from the moment of its acquisition on-site to the time of its processing and input in a GIS. Using FDA methodology is possible to capture data directly on-site using a handheld computer equipped with GPS, GIS and database software, and digital cartography. Another advantage of FDA is the economy of time, without having to waste it collecting data in conventional format on-site, to have to postprocess all this data in a computer with the risk of loosing vital information. FDA methodology guarantees the correct location, delimitation and documentation of settlements or landmarks, making the work on-site and realtime.

Geoinformation technologies for …, 2009

En Oliver Bender, Niki Evelpidou, Alenka Krek y Andreas Vassilopoulos (eds.). Geoinformation Technologies for Geocultural Landscapes: European Perspectives. Londres, pp. 35-46.

‘Beyond the city walls. The landscapes of Aquileia’ (BCW) is a landscape archaeology project based in NE Italy seeking to investigate the peripheral landscapes of the Roman city of Aquileia out of its city walls, to identify the extent of the periphery, to define its nature, and to understand the relationship between urban core and its fringes. Aquileia was one of the largest and wealthiest ancient Roman cities, located in a key area for commercial exchanges between the Danubian regions and the Mediterranean basin. The site represents an exception in the North Mediterranean panorama, in that it is a unique case of a landscape scarcely touched by the massive 20th century urbanisation characteristic of Europe. Archaeological prospection can be carried out from the immediate edge of the urban perimeter into a large surrounding area. It is, hence, exceptional in retaining a relatively intact Roman peripheral landscape around a city of that size in antiquity. The BCW project is building up and applying a methodology for defining peripheral spaces, urban/non-urban interface, models of settlement development and landscape transformation by employing traditional archaeological research integrated with a combination of aerial and multi/hyper-spectral Remote Sensing (RS), geophysical techniques, 3D laser scanning, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). These tools have amply proved their value to archaeological research as practical methods of detecting, recording and analysing visible and masked remains of ancient settlement across the landscape. However these tools are often applied piecemeal. The paper will convey an overview about how different datasets (aerial, Lidar, multi-spectral and hyper-spectral Remote Sensing data, historical and modern cartography, geophysics data) are being integrated to locate, map and interpret archaeological features and how a large array of RS data can overcome the specific shortcomings of each of these types of imagery. The project is also trialling new approaches to digital field data collection using handheld Android consumer tablets with a view to directly upload field-walking data (descriptive forms, GPS data, field photographs) into an integrated geo-database and visualise RS data on site, thus simplifying the field-walking procedures and streamlining data collection, eliminating the need of post-fieldwork data download and transcription.

2004

Abstract Research needs dictate whether mobile GIS data recording be expedient or thorough, and data acquisition can allow for flexibility with varied or unpredictable field conditions. By giving researchers access to large digital datasets and spatial analysis tools while in the field, mobile GIS facilitates the data acquisition process and can contribute to the quality and the efficiency of fieldwork.