Katrien COUSSERIER
(Flemish Heritage Institute, Brussel, Belgium)
Current research carried out by the Flemish Heritage Institute is aimed at the creation of a methodology for drawing up archaeological inventories and evaluation maps in urban environments, by means of a test case in the Roman city of Tongeren. The instrument should be useful for research as well as management purposes.
For this, all relevant resources concerning archaeological interventions, soil disturbances etc. are used, on three scale levels: 1) that of the city and its position in the landscape, 2) the internal structure of the city, and 3) the level of the individual (archaeological) site. Most of the sources are based on older excavations and observations (from the ’30’s onwards). More recent data (for example excavation plans) are digitally available. Even these fairly recent sources often pose georeferencing problems.
For the project, all available excavation maps, starting with the most recent, are digitized, georeferenced and vectorised based on a recent land register map. This results in a fairly detailed inventory of excavated areas and the registered archaeological features in GIS. In addition soil disturbances and their depth are mapped. Thus data from archaeological and other interventions are combined to create a map of the thickness of the anthropogenic sediments.
The result will be evaluated and interpreted using for example dtm data. The end result has to be useful as a methodology for drawing up archaeological inventories of urban centres in Flanders.
Keywords: inventory, evaluation, methodology, urban environment