Arqueología y gis

Archaeology and GIS: ‘Archaeology is the determination of human behaviour from the location of cultural objects.’ In this second article in our series on the value of GIS for different sciences we turn our focus to Archaeology. In this discipline, GIS is being used much more widely and intensely than among historians (see: our first article). However, the integration of GIS is by no meanscomplete. The databases have been filled in by eager archaeologists, but these are not always suitable for GIS-analyses. Also, the financial resources needed for innovative research methods (such as GIS) are lacking. This is a missed opportunity for both for parties – archaeologists and GIS-designers. On the one hand, GIS certainly has potential for archaeological research. On the other hand,archaeologists could be of great value when it comes to 3- and 4D-visualisations. Archaeology is a discipline that is, in many ways, particularly suitable for the use of GIS. Unlike historians, who almost naturally tend to focus on temporal dimensions, archaeologists have a natural interest in both time and location/place. The first studies in ‘spatial’ archaeology already appeared during the 1970s. As HansKamermans, Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Leyden, has strikingly pointed out: “Archaeology is the determination of human behaviour, from the location of cultural objects.” Moreover, archaeologists have started to digitalise their data much earlier than historians. The use of computers and computer-based analyses is therefore much more imbedded in their research methods. Also,the introduction of GIS, during the mid 1980s, fitted in well with the dominant quantitative methodology at the time – also known as the ‘New Archaeology’. Methodological objections, as the ones we encountered with historians, are therefore not to be expected in this field. To what extent have these positive circumstances indeed been translated in intensive use of GIS among archaeologists? Theannual proceedings of Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology (CAA), a scientific society, may give us a good indication. The first European paper dedicated to the application of GIS in archaeology was presented at a CAA-conference in 1988. With the exception of 1989, when no such paper appeared, the number of articles increased to five per year thereafter. According to HansKamermans, who has been a secretary of the CAA for 12 years, the real break-through came in 1995. In that year, 15 papers were presented in which the use of GIS for collecting, visualising and analysing of archaeological data was the main focus. Moreover, from 1995 onwards these papers were now collected under a separate heading: ‘spatial analyses’ or simply ‘GIS’. During the same period, severalhundreds of articles and tens of edited volumes were published on GIS in Archaeology. Also, at least one journal was founded that deals exclusively with this topic. All these developments signify a growing interest in GIS among archaeologists. When we compare the developments in archaeology to our growth model (see: ‘In search of an explanatory model’ – on our website) we see that the differentphases that have been identified by us are more or less in line with reality. Let’s take the development in the Netherlands as an example. According to Kamermans it were the publications of a small number of American ‘champions’ during the late 1980s, who used GIS to predict the location of archaeological sites, who raised an interest among archaeologists in this country. This resulted in 1988 in apaper by the Leyden archaeologist Milco Wansleeben at the CAA-conference that we mentioned earlier. Two years later the American Ken Kvamme came to Leyden to inform his Dutch colleagues on the ins and outs of ‘predictive modelling’. It was not until 1995, however,

that archaeologists here started to take a serious interest and that at conferences in the Netherlands and elsewhere in Europe GIS...