Sites, Cameras, Location: Towards a Quantitative Methodology of Recording Archaeological Fieldwork (original) (raw)
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2004
Archaeology is one of the sectors that can benefit by new surveying techniques (i.e. those ones related to the use of GPS) for the representation and the management of an archaeological site. Another aspect of the archaeological sector that can take advantage from the use of both GPS and GIS instruments is guided visits of archaeological sites. Today, during visits in museums, visitors often use some electronic equipments as sound players, special headsets or personal computers equipped with multimedia applications. All this is possible because archaeological goods are in a relatively small covered area, where there are also people that can help the visitor at every time. On the opposite, about visiting open archaeological sites, some other problems or needs come out connected to the big dimension of the area, to the scattered distribution of archaeological goods and to meteorological conditions. So enjoying the site with traditional electronics equipment become impossible. On the c...
Digitally Recording Excavations on a Budget: A (Low-Cost) DIY Approach from Scotland
Journal of Field Archaeology, 2021
The increasing use of digital technologies can provide significant benefits to the excavation and interpretative process in archaeology. Yet, despite major developments in the last two decades, digital recording can still be seen as part of the realm of tech savvy archaeologists, well-funded projects, or larger commercial units who can develop their own recording systems or deploy a pre-existing application. The latter are often expensive and can be technologically challenging to implement, and few of these focus on both context recording and feature drawing. In response, this paper presents an accessible and flexible low-cost DIY digital workflow developed by the Comparative Kingship Project, Scotland, allowing field practitioners to benefit from some of the key advantages of "going digital" without the associated costs or complexities of some of the other systems.
GIS for archaeological excavations: Legacy data analysis and Fieldwork recommendations
2021
This work aims to investigate the structure of archaeological legacy data. This is undertaken to<br> evaluate the possibility of their integration into GIS. From this, recommendations for a GIS-optimized<br> field method will be drawn in a first approach. The study is conducted on documentary data samples<br> in particular mapping data from various archaeological excavation projects. The samples are<br> mainly from excavation projects in the traditional field of german archaeology. In addition, open<br> data sets from Great Britain are considered.<br> The approach is intended to provide a better understanding of the structure and content of<br> archaeological documentation data. Thus, it aims to evaluate and further develop GIS as a recording tool<br> for archaeological fieldwork, concerning an efficient and sensible implementation and planning of<br> field recording strategies.<br> This work's focus and perspective are...
2020
Nazarij Buławka Department of Near Eastern Archaeology Institute of Archaeology University of Warsaw Poland nazar.bulawka@gmail.com Abstract Ever since field survey has become an important method in researching ancient communities we can observe improvement of its technological and theoretical aspects. Nowadays, rapid urban sprawl and intensified agriculture lead to the increasing destruction of sites and archaeological landscapes throughout the globe. Thus, an adequate low budget strategies is needed, that will able help to document, preserve, study and manage all what is left. The introduction of GIS and GNSS mobile applications opened a such possibility. At the 2017 CAA meetings in Atlanta, the authors organized a session entitled “Mobile GIS in archaeology – current possibilities, future needs”, at which the current issues and possibilities were discussed. The session resulted in this summary paper. The main aim of the paper is to re-evaluate the contemporary concept of the surv...
Archaeological Survey Supported by Mobile GIS
Advances in Archaeological Practice, 2022
In recent years, digital technologies applied to archaeology have led to considerable changes in fieldwork. However, the use of mobile GIS for fieldwork has not been widespread, especially in countries where GIS is not yet entrenched within the field of archaeology. Over the last decade, the technological context associated with mobile GIS has changed. In this text, these changes are discussed based on a case study developed in Catamarca (Argentina), in which the possibilities of a more generalized use of mobile GIS-based on free, open, and available resources (software, data, devices)-are discussed. This article assesses the main problems faced and describes the basic steps taken to implement a field recording system based on mobile GIS.
"Using mobile GIS. for Field Digital Data Acquisition (FDA) in archaeological field survey"
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.
Mobile GIS in Archaeology: Current Possibilities, Future Needs. Position Paper
Digital Archaeologies, Material Worlds (Past and Present). Proceedings of the 45rd Annual Conference on Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology, edited by Jeffrey B. Glover, Jessica Moss, and Dominique Rissolo, 99–113. Tübingen: Tübingen University Press, 2020
Ever since field survey has become an important method in researching ancient communities we can observe improvement of its technological and theoretical aspects. Nowadays, rapid urban sprawl and intensified agriculture lead to the increasing destruction of sites and archaeological landscapes throughout the globe. Thus, an adequate low budget strategies is needed, that will able help to document, preserve, study and manage all what is left. The introduction of GIS and GNSS mobile applications opened a such possibility. At the 2017 CAA meetings in Atlanta, the authors organized a session entitled "Mobile GIS in archaeology current possibilities, future needs", at which the current issues and possibilities were discussed. The session resulted in this summary paper. The main aim of the paper is to re-evaluate the contemporary concept of the survey that was introduced due to a rapid increase of GPS accuracy and development of mobile technology.
In one hand: RS, GIS, and GPS integration made easy for archaeological surveys.
‘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.