Advanced Archaeological Training

Organizer: Christian NEUWIRTH
(University of Salzburg, Austria)

The systematic analysis of geodata opens great opportunities for archeologist who are interested in quantitative hypothesis testing and analytics. In this training session, we will give an overview of geocomputational concepts and their application in the field of archeology. In order to deepen the practical understanding of participants, we will introduce methods such as high-resolution LIDAR data manipulation, spatial analysis and spatial simulation in a guided hands-on session.

Participants have the opportunity to get to know these methods by performing geospatial operations to investigate three different use cases:

  1. Querying the spatial distribution of charcoal hearths in the Blue Mountain region, Pennsylvania
  2. Visibility analysis of Fortress Hohensalzburg
  3. Examining the potential irrigation function of a canal-shaped landform in Upper Austria

The free and open tools QGIS and GAMA are used to perform the respective tasks. The training session covers comparably simple geospatial operations (e.g. database querying and pre-processing) as well as the more advanced topics of spatial simulation. Accordingly, the proposed event equally addresses geospatial newbies and more experienced participants.

Number of participants: No specific limitation on the number of participants (except for limitations imposed by the available physical infrastructure)

Software Requirements: QGIS 3.16 (64bit Long term release)

By default, QGIS installs QGIS Desktop 3.10.11 and QGIS Desktop 3.10.11 with Grass 7.8.4. Please use the latter one during the training session!

Gama 1.8.1 (with JDK):
Save the Gama download in your program files. There is no installation required. You may create a shortcut on your desktop.

(UNIGIS Distance Learning in Geoinformatics University of Salzburg)