Technology
Rebuilding History One Megabyte at a Time
(archrecord.construction.com - 03/2005 issue)
... sponsored by the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
A company called ESRI donated some $50,000 worth of their
GIS software for the database.
The documentation system and training
program were developed by Dr. Gaetano Palumbo, WMF’s
director of archaeological conservation for the Middle East,
Africa, and Central Asia. He based them on a similar program
he implemented for the neighboring country of Jordan in the
1990s. The first official training sessions for the initiative
took place in Jordan’s capital, Amman, in November and
December 2004, as conditions are not yet safe enough in Iraq
to assess sites in-country.
In Iraq, SBAH personnel will collect
site data using a combination of digital devices and manual
methods. During training sessions, Palumbo and his team demonstrated
how to use a GIS total station—a digital surveying instrument
that combines an electronic transit, a distance-measuring
device, and a data recorder. Field crew for SBAH will set
up the total station at each site to collect locations and
measurements of buildings, monuments, excavations, or other
features under study. A separate laser distance meter will
be used to obtain a higher degree of precision where needed
(e.g., when measuring a room’s dimensions or a monument’s
surface features). These devices eliminate many of the manual
calculations of field surveying and measurement, and by linking
the data collected with known geographic landmarks, the features
of each site can be pinpointed in real space. Once dimensions
are measured, field teams would then make other observations
and assessments about each site, such as noting the number
and condition of site artifacts, building elements, and the
like. Such information will be entered in simple field log
books or on portable computers, if available.
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| Samarra,
A.D. 9th century: The Great Mosque is a well-known icon
of this early Islamic capital. Photography: Courtesy The
World Monuments Fund/John Russel |
Ultimately, the information will be
entered into a GIS database designed by Stephen Savage, a
professor of archaeology at Arizona State University in Tempe.
He had worked with Palumbo previously to upgrade a similar
system for Jordan, known as the Jordan Archaeological Database
Information System (JADIS).
The WMF/GCI initiative puts SBAH on
the leading edge of technological developments in preservation
and conservation in the Middle East. “Astonishing accuracy
hasn’t been the tradition in archaeology,” says
Whalen. “Only in the last 5 or 10 years have these technologies
gotten powerful enough and easy enough to use to make them
feasible for these sites.” Savage notes that U.S. states
such as Wyoming, New Mexico, and Arizona are creating similar
systems to document historic sites, and Whalen says the U.K.
and Europe have implemented such systems for a few years.
Compared to their Western counterparts, though, JADIS and
SBAH’s databases are designed to run on smaller, less-powerful
computers, with fewer specialists needed to maintain them,
to make them more feasible to implement in countries with
fewer staff and modest budgets.
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| Uruk (Warka), 4,500
b.c.: Some of the first examples of writing were found
in Uruk, one of the first large cities established in
Mesopotamia. Photography: Courtesy The World Monuments
Fund/John Russel |
If there’s a trade-off to the efficiencies
of high-tech tools, it is that they make adequate training
all the more important. “The last thing we want to do
is come in with fancy equipment and leave behind a system
that the Iraqis can’t maintain,” says Michelle Berenfeld,
WMF’s program manager for the initiative. Whalen says
GCI will stay involved until training proves sufficient to
create a long-term program, a process he estimates will take
three to five years.
Both organizations stress that the effort
isn’t one of simple patronage. “Many of the trainers
are of Iraqi descent and have been working elsewhere in preservation
and conservation for years,” says Berenfeld. “They’ve
just been isolated for a long time, and they need the participation
of the international community to get their program off the
ground.”
(Continued...)
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