Francesco Uliano SCELZA
(Università di Salerno, Italy)
Keywords: Spatio-Temporal modeling; GIS; Database
Abstract:
The paper describes a proposal for modeling the spatial, temporal and typological dimensions of archaeological data. The proposal is developed on the basis of a formal approach. That is to say with the aim of building a coherent system, complete and multi-level, where the archaeological sources are classified according to stable principles and led back to unifying concepts, able to meet the degree of distinction of the material evidence. Each source is a testimony of an activity localized in one place, in a time and according to a function. These dimensions are not unique. They generate a non-linear function of three related variables. The result of this function is the landscape (urban or rural): a portion of space, anthropized, and historically determined. The problem concerns the need to unify the various available sources, bibliographic, archival, systematic, unsystematic, relating to any type of discovery. The system, that I propose, consists of a portion in which are developed the logical and functional constraints of the data, in the form of database, and of an operating GIS environment, made up in 4 coordinates, 3 for space and one for time. The system is built with the purpose of analyzing the spatial distributions, through time, of human activities and to document the variability. It is a structure that represents and analyzes the chronograph (time, date, etc..), the spatiality (location, size, morphology), and the functionality of archaeological finds. Moreover, since each entity recorded changes in shape, size and location, it has a beginning and an end, varied role, nature and behavior, the system was created to manage such an order of mutability. The system was tested during a PhD thesis about the study of population dynamics in the Archaic period in southern Italy.