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Creating a Grid for Field Work
A large part of what I do professionally relies on old tactics done in the field. For the typical phase I survey, the standard procedure is to create a grid with a consistent interval to place the locations of shovel test pits. This is traditionally done with pull-tape, a compass and at least two people placing flags every fifty-or-so feet, in order to create a systematic sample of archaeological material culture in the lab.
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Later, this information would be transcribed to a GIS map and presented in the report. For the project above, I implemented a different method. I simply generated a random grid within the Area of Potential Effects polygon in ArcMap, and labeled the shovel test pits by consecutive numbers.
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Next, I exported the grid to a .kml format and used my google drive to share it with my coworkers. This way, they were able to access this spatial information via google maps (as seen above) and were able to excavate shovel tests on location without the need to take time to set up the grid.
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This series of simple operations allowed us to bypass the grid laying process (which in this particular area, which was large and heavily overgrown could have taken at least two whole days of work for the crew), update our results live (this would allow the project managers to see our progress in live time), and save us the time of shooting the grid in with the help of a hand-held GPS at the very end.
Georeferencing
I often find myself working with historic aerial data. Whether it be historic maps, or aerial photographs, this data often requires a fair amount of georeferencing.
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Georeferencing is a process of transforming two dimensional picture data into a cartographic surface. This is done by manually stretching the image, and anchoring it to visible reference points to a properly referenced aerial. When this is done properly, ArcMap creates accompanying files in the source folder for the imagery which will automatically place the underlying historical imagery in its appropriate geographic placement.
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The three examples provided show a map of the project area, as it was at the time of the map creation. This allows us to gain a better understanding of the area, and tells us what we may expect in terms of material culture.
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*Project location information was cropped out of the images, for the purpose of preserving archaeological integrity.
Cartographic Aesthetics
Much of my work relies specifically on creating legible, aesthetic layouts which clearly express all information obtained from the field. The project map shown above shows shovel test locations, as well as known disturbances, historical mining features, bodies of water and photograph locations done during the survey.
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The shovel test pit locations, as well as the mining shafts are better seen in their corresponding extent insets, and were initially recorded with a hand-held GPS unit. This information was later brought back into the lab and imported with GPS Pathfinder Office.
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