In the vein of the previous participation assignment I found an article regarding GIS in archaeology. This article discusses the use of a WebGIS to share all manner of archaeological data (maps, aerial imagery, geophysical survey data, and excavation reports). This provides a useful, interoperable platform that georeferences various types of archaeological data for a given site. The article provides a great overview of Open Geospatial Consortium standards ensuring interoperability, metadata standards, and open source GIS programs. It also reviews the web architecture (a framework that uses a Python environment — Django). Data is uploaded as an ESRI shape file (vector) or GeoTIFF (raster) and then the user is prompted to provide metadata and set access privileges.
The matter of secure access is discussed since there are various academic institutions involved. Certain functionalities are given to registered users versus unregistered users creating a user hierarchy. The authors also addresses cooperation between various institutions. The authors are developing this system for Aquileia, Italy. This site is a region of international research interest, meaning there is a wealth of archaeological data to potentially share with remote colleagues. Not only would a site-specific WebGIS be fostering a cooperative environment it also provides an open-source platform that can quicken the pace of discovery and analysis. A WebGIS is also cost-effective (a major concern for any researcher/academic institution). I can see this framework having great utility at an archaeological site. There are issues to work out like which institution bears the ultimate weight of developing and maintaining the host site as well as who would ultimately be in charge of overseeing content. This would require that an archaeologist have an understanding of IT or be able to outsource to an interested computer science colleague (a great way for inter-departmental cooperation). At any rate, what an excellent way to gain an in-depth knowledge of a site while communication with fellow researchers. GIS is quickly becoming an integral, necessary aspect of archaeological research.
Citation
Gallo, P., & Roberto, V. (2012). ANTEO: Sharing Archaeological Data on a WebGIS Platform. In L. Fozzati and V. Roberto (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on The New Technologies for Aquileia. Retrieved from http://ceur-ws.org/Vol-948/paper3.pdf
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