An interactive museum for the Palaeolithic site of Melka Kunture (Ethiopia): Archaeological and geological data, digital photogrammetry and web mapping

Riccardo SALVINI¹ / Maria Cristina SALVI¹ / Giulia GRUPPIONI¹ / Leonardo CARMIGNANI¹ / Marcello PIPERNO² / Rosalia GALLOTTI² / Guy KIEFFER³ / Jean-Paul RAYNAL⁴ / Maria Grazia BULGARELLI⁵ / Carmine COLLINA²

(¹Università di Siena, Italy / ²Università di Roma “La Sapienza”, Italy / ³Italian Archaeological Mission at Melka Kunture and Balchit / ⁴Università di Bordeaux 1, France / ⁵Soprintendenza al Museo Nazionale Preistorico Etnografico “L. Pigorini”, Italy)

Purpose:
Among the others, aim of this paper, inserted in the Culture 2000 project titled “From past to the present in Ethiopian Prehistory. An Interactive Museum for the Archaeological Park of the Early Palaeolithic site of Melka Kunture”, was the creation of the archaeological Geographic Information System (GIS) by using two stereo IKONOS satellite imageries. A DPGS survey was performed in order to collect topographic, archaeological and geological data useful to the creation of the geodatabase. Photogrammetric techniques were used for the restitution of the new topographic map at a scale of 1:10,000 to be delivered to the Ethiopian Archaeological Service; this map will constitute an essential tool for monitoring, preserving and studying several scattered sites over the area. Moreover, terrestrial photogrammetric techniques were applied to the Gombore II Open Air Museum, in order to record archaeological data and to carry out geometric analyses useful in site process formation understanding. The stereoscopic vision allowed to measure information such as slope and aspect essential for the depositional and post-depositional dynamics identification which are responsible of the archaeological layer constitution. Finally, a web-GIS was created representing an interactive museum containing forty years research and excavation data (please consult the web site at the following address: http://www.melkakunture.eu by October). The web-GIS was created on VMS open source systems, maintaining the data structures on postgreSQL/postGIS, in order to allow future data inserting and updating via web. The Melka Kunture web site will permit a virtual tour on the region, and single archaeological sites will be available on detail through the related photos, maps and information.

Keywords: Palaeolithic, stereo IKONOS, DGPS, Terrestrial Photogrammetry, webGIS