On the 30th of March, Prof. Hèctor A. Orengo (ICREA research professor at ICAC) will be in the British School at Athens, delivering the keynote lecture for the workshop “Mapping the Past, Plotting the Future. GIS in Archaeology. Maturity & Implementation“, organised by the Laboratory of Archaeological GIS (AeGIS Athena) of the Athena Research Center in Xanthi (Greece).
Hybrid event! Register here: https://forms.gle/1Yyzg4fLzkBUobbY7
“New approaches to spatial analyses in archaeology: from GISystems to GIScience“
Prof. Hèctor A. Orengo
ICREA Research Professor
Catalan Institute of Classical Archaeology (ICAC)
During the last 30 years or so GIS has become an important tool in the archaeological toolbox. It’s conceptualisation and application has gone through different phases, which have been marked by the increasing availability of software, data, computation, and expertise but also by changing theoretical and disciplinary approaches. From the initial use of CAM, CAD and raster analysis tools to the boom of archaeological GIS in the mid-90s, and the higher accessibility of integrated raster-vector platforms and topographic analyses in the 2000’s. After these initial years of button pressing and viewsheds, GIS became a kind of technical subdiscipline. Despite the increased availability of expertise, software, data, and computing power, the mid-2010s marked the bottom of the GIS hype cycle. GIS-based analyses became more difficult to publish while postprocessual criticism of GIS finally caught up.
The last years have seen important changes: (1) the increase of public geographic data availability thanks to the Inspire Directive, the Copernicus programs, and other initiatives; (2) the appearance of new sensors, platforms and types of data; (3) an emphasis on the use of big-data and new types of analysis that can deal with them (statistics-based analyses/modelling, machine learning, ABM); (4) new computing capabilities and platforms providing cloud access to parallel and GPU-based computing; (5) an increased focus on reproducibility, reuse and code transfer; and (6) new topics and subjects of interest (such as cultural evolution, digital humanities, etc.).
This talk will aim to discuss the role of GIS today and the need to move from GISystems to GISciences/Geosicences. Only by adopting flexible and integrative approaches that go beyond any set of programs, we will be able to successfully integrate and exploit all these new changes.
