Advanced Archaeological Training

Christian NEUWIRTH
(UNIGIS Distance Learning in Geoinformatics, Austria)

Keywords: Geospatial analysis and simulation, open tools, QGIS, GAMA, LIDAR

Description: The systematic analysis of geodata opens great opportunities for archaeologists who are interested in quantitative hypothesis testing and analytics. In this training session, we will give an overview of geo-computational concepts and their application in the field of archaeology. 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. Examining the potential irrigation function of a canal-shaped landform in Upper Austria
  3. Visibility analysis of Fortress Hohensalzburg

In order to investigate these hypotheses, we will reconstruct the pre-modern terrain model, run least-cost path analyses and simulate water flow through a historic irrigation canal.
Different free and open tools such as 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)