Abstract
The surveying, analysis and documentation of ancient infrastructures or settlement sites are often carried out by the additional use of geoinformatic software and tools, i.e. embedded in geoinformation systems (GIS). Since these GIS-methods are usually adjusted to the local use case, the spatial dimensions, coordinates, map projections and file formats differ significantly between individual survey sites and/or archaeological focus. Consequently, the interdisciplinary digital fusion and interactive analysis of such regional varying geodata by collaborating teams of archaeologists are often a quite cumbersome procedure. Alternatively, new web-based GIS online technologies offer a unique opportunity to quickly visualize thematic maps, location metadata and find details of archaeological objects in a standardized way, also allow the upload of individual geodata from any local client via the internet. Hence individual scientists can contribute information to the documentation and spatial relation of these objects not only by mail or data attachments (GeoArchaeology Web 1.0) but also by directly integrating their standardized geodata using an online webserver-portal (GeoArchaeology Web 2.0). The aim of this study is to assess the potential use of the open source GeoServer software and related web-applications to generate a new archaeological perspective on geospatial data with different scales, resolutions, thematic focus and information depths. Therefore, the two case studies range from a small scale, large regional scope (Sudan) to scales of local conventional excavations (Turkey). Both surveys provided various datasets (i.e. base maps, UAS aerial images, terrain models, photographs, attribute and GPS data, field observations, etc.) which were combined in an interactive web-based geoportal with global range and minimum scale limitations since the service was based on a WGS84 map projection. The embedded archaeological data follows accepted Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards which are available in every GIS. This particular archaeological data infrastructure enables not only the publication and visualization of archaeological datasets in a web-based geoportal but also the interactive geospatial interpretation and data extension of the whole available data pool “by third party users” in order to enrich and promote further scientific discussion on archaeological issues of the respective sites.
Highlights
During the last decade geoinformatic methods have had a strong impact on archaeological survey principles and data processing strategies (Wheatley & Gillings, 2002; Chapman, 2006; Prinz, Krüger, & Lasar, 2010; Hacigüzeller, 2012)
The German Landesamt für Archäologie Sachsen established a Documentation and Informations system in Archaeology (DIA) which allows the web-visualisation, recombination and request of all available archaeological geodata in Saxonia for internal purposes (Göldner, 2007, 2012), but its core functionality is based on commercial client/server applications
We focus on the aspect of building an architecture which supports mechanisms of adding additional services and data formats to the application in order to widen the analysis opportunities in terms of geographical relations between investigation sites by including global base layers and coordinate systems (Figure 1)
Summary
During the last decade geoinformatic methods have had a strong impact on archaeological survey principles and data processing strategies (Wheatley & Gillings, 2002; Chapman, 2006; Prinz, Krüger, & Lasar, 2010; Hacigüzeller, 2012). Analysis and visualisation can be carried out in such systems at various geospatial scales according to the geographical dimension of the specific survey. In contrast to computer aided-design software (CAD), a GIS (and related geoservices) is capable to deal with temporal (stratigrafic) aspects of findings or related metadata. This is the essential motivation for many archaeological teams to log and record their survey data by use of traditional documentation methods (pen and paper strategy) and by applying innovative geoinformatically processed geospatial data sampling techniques. The interoperability of the system is limited since it depends on its special architecture, specific file formats, data availability and restricted client policies and licenses
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