GIS Basics - An Introduction

One of the greatest difficulties of using new technologies in archaeological investigations is the lack of educational materials that speak directly to the archaeological discipline. In relation to GIS, a number of resources have sought to remedy this situation over the past decade and a half. These include Allen, Green, and Zubrow’s Interpreting Space: GIS and Archaeology (1990), Lock and Stancic’s Archaeology and Geographical Information Systems: A European Perspective (1995), Aldenderfer and Maschner’s Anthropology, Space and Geographic Information Systems (1996), Maschner’s New Methods, Old Problems: Geographical Information Systems in Modern Archaeological Research (1996), Johnson and North (1997), Lock (2000), Westcott and Brandon’s Practical Applications of GIS for Archaeologists: A Predictive Modeling Kit (2000), and Wheatly and Gillings’ Spatial Technology and Archaeology: The Archaeological Applications of GIS (2002). These authors discuss GIS from what I term a ‘high-level’ approach. Their discussions center on various forms of analysis (i.e. viewshed analysis, least cost pathway analysis, etc.) and do not discuss the actual scheme used to organize the data itself. These texts also include ‘low-level’ discussions that discuss the two types of data structures in a GIS: vector and raster (see the following section for definitions).

Articles and texts that do speak about the ‘nuts and bolts’ of structuring archaeological data in a GIS environment are practically non-existent. The conference on “Archaeological Applications of GIS: Proceedings of Colloquium II, UISPP XIIIth Congress” in Forli, Italy (1996) resulted in an impressive collection of papers and articles. This collection was published in a CD-ROM format, but included only one article that briefly dealt with data collection and structuring considerations. However, even this article, titled “The Corinth Computer Project: Reconstructing the City Plan and Landscape of Roman Corinth” by David Gilman Romano of the University of Pennsylvania, did not deal with specific data structuring formats. Moreover, a discussion of data structuring in this article would not have proven useful as archaeologists at the University of Pennsylvania sometimes use an independent, Unix-based GIS system.

A recent example of an archaeological geodatabase in the GIS literature comes from British Columbia. A short editorial piece in ESRICanada’s ArchNorth News (2002) titled “HRIA – BC’s Archaeological Geodatabase” (available for download from www.esricanada.com) showcases the benefits of using a geodatabase for archaeology. This article is less than one page long and did not include the geodatabase design.

Of course, archaeology is not the only discipline to make use of GIS and ESRI’s recent geodatabase structure. In fact, ESRI Press published an excellent resource in 2004 edited by David Arctur and Micheal Zeiler titled Designing Geodatabases: Case Studies in GIS Data Modeling. This text explores geodatabase design concepts, followed by numerous case studies from a wide range of disciplines such as hydrographic studies, municipalities, surveying, and basic cartography. Only brief mentions of heritage resources as part of wider, natural-resource based geodatabases occur throughout the text. While this text is an excellent resource for first-time and experienced designers of geodatabases, it fails to provide a functioning scheme appropriate for archaeology. This text does, however, provide precedents from other disciplines who have struggled with the question of structuring GIS data.

The absence of archaeological geodatabase designs from both the archaeological and wider GIS literature is unfortunate. This situation means that archaeologists interested in geodatabase design have nowhere to turn for an example. While the reason for this situation is not clear, perhaps it is similar to the general disappearance of surveying methods from archaeological texts. In other words, its absence may be attributed to the realm of specialists. However, as discussed above, even the specialist books fail to include this ‘mid-level’ GIS topic.