3 - PUTTING GIS TO WORK IN ARCHAEOLOGY

Summary

This chapter reviews four typical applications of GIS in archaeology: management of archaeological resources, excavation, landscape archaeology and the spatial modelling of past human behaviour. For each application we discuss some general issues concerning the use of GIS in that particular context, followed by a presentation of a case study that illustrates the contribution that GIS has made. Although these examples are in no way exhaustive, they do provide a good overview of the capabilities and potential contributions that GIS can make to archaeological management and research.

Management of archaeological resources

It is not our intention to discuss the objectives of cultural resource management (CRM), nor the appropriate structure of a spatial database for managing the archaeological record, as these decisions are most appropriately made by government bodies and the archaeologists charged with the tasks of recording and managing the archaeological resource. However, we note that archaeological and historic databases have increasingly been subject to government scrutiny. In the UK, this most recently occurred in a parliamentary review of archaeology that took place in 2003 (APPAG 2003; Gilman 2004). In particular, the UK archaeological databases termed ‘Sites and Monuments Records’ (SMRs) are under review in light of recent developments in information technology, especially GIS and the Internet (e.g. Newman 2002). This report makes it clear that SMRs should evolve into broader Historic Environment Records (HERs) that include information such as historic buildings, parks and gardens, historic aircraft crash sites, etc.