The GIS as information system for the control of the excavation data of historical monumental complexes

Abstract

Apart from few and very exceptional cases, the archaeological record all over the world is too much fragmentary to return a direct vision of ancient lives and landscapes. The context is usually lost and it is left to the skills of the specialists «to piece together the fragments of the past». To contrast this natural constraints every generation of archaeologists deviced better and better means from the recovery, the documentation and the analyses of the different assemblages of data, from geographic maps to the subatomic definition of objects and organic tissues. The last generations are all engaged in the computer science, with an increasing capacity to combine vast archives of data in single pictures. Reconstruction has been made possible more recently by the so-called “stochastic procedures”, by combining very large numbers operations, modelling the scattered fragments into true pictures of lost realities. Thus the recording, stocking and displaying of data in the computers give us the possibility to develop higher and more complex level of analyses, more comparable to those used by other branches of science investigating living realities. Geographical Information Systems (GIS) at present are the main instrument available from the computer science to reconstruct the daily life of human populations in their historical fluctuations, by combining data and information from maps, surveys and excavations. This work is included in the MURST-COFIN 1998 project under the responsibility of Prof. A. Carandini, University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Italy. The principal aim of the project is to develop a computer assisted method that could help in excavation management and support Stratigraphic Unit (SU) forms with as much information as possible. The system is basically modular, based both on an alphanumeric database containing all the tables with the Stratigraphic Unit (SU) information and the materials found during the excavation both on another module containing the graphic representations of SU and of the excavated layers. Both the modules are managed by and inside a GIS engine that allows the final user to display and analyse the entire excavated context, by performing simple queries, outputting in this way diachronic phase maps and allowing intrasite analyses. The final module is made by a displaying, querying and analysing 3D system of the SU and of the walls, allowing in this way to display in real time the evolution of a living unit or an entire excavated context.