Ethics and Archaeology

This week in GIS Applications in Archaeology we focused on ethics. Each major archaeological society has a statement regarding ethics and the important role that archaeologists need to take in protecting archaeological sites and discouraging the trade in artifacts.  The graduate reading also discussed the use of tools like Google Earth to monitor important archaeological sites for looting.  The primary example focused on the country of Jordan. We also each provided a summary of our view on ethics in archaeology, a discussion that will, no doubt, get pretty interesting.

To follow that up, we explored the MEGA Jordan site and created a feature class based on the coordinates retrieved from this site. The premier site in Jordan is, of course, Petra, as any Indiana Jones fan and archaeologist should know.  These sites are presented in the map above.

On the practical side, the exercise involved using a file geodatabase as the repository for our "sensitive" data.  The file geodatabase is a good choice for archaeologists as it easy to move (just zip up the folder), has few size limits (limited only by disk space) and can be easily secured (save to removable drive or encrypt the folder). The easier it is to secure information about precious sites, the less likely it will fall into the hands of those who what to exploit it.