GIS in Archaeology

GIS In Archaeology

GIS or Geographic Information Systems has over the last 10 years become an important tool in archaeology. Indeed, archaeologists were some of the early adopters, users, and developers of GIS and GISCience, Geographic Information Science. The combination of GIS and archaeology has been considered a perfect match, since archaeology often involves the study of the spatial dimension of human behavior over time, and all archaeology carries a spatial component.

Since archaeology looks at the unfolding of historical events through geography, time and culture, the results of archaeological studies are rich in spatial information. GIS is adept at processing these large volumes of data, especially that which is geographically referenced. It is a cost effective, accurate and fast tool. The tools made available through GIS help in data collection, its storage and retrieval, its manipulation for customized circumstances and, finally, the display of the data so that it is visually comprehensible by the user. The most important aspect of GIS in archaeology lies, however, not in its use as a pure map-making tool, but in its capability to merge and analyse different types of data in order to create new information. The use of GIS in archaeology has changed not only the way archaeologists acquire and visualise data, but also the way in which archaeologists think about space itself. GIS has therefore become more of a science than an objective tool.