Computing, GIS and Archaeology in the UK

I was contacted by someone who has downloaded portable GIS, very sensibly asking for information on the postgresql connection details. When I tried to respond to this person, their email address bounced back with a permanent failure, so I thought I’d better write something here so he doesn’t think I’m not replying!

Now, I was sure that I had included a readme file specific to the postgresql installation, but it looks like the pixies might have eaten it. Anyhow: the very secret local username and password for postgresql on the USB stick are: postgres and grespost. Please take the opportunity to create your own username and password if you are concerned about security. Don’t say I didn’t warn you…

The next version (in a couple of months) will have better documentation- I promise. The trouble is that as every developer knows, creating documentation is the longest part of any project. If I had waited until I had some decent documentation I wouldn’t have released it at all, and believe me I’m glad I did, the reponse has been fabulous. I won’t, however, be including  documentation about how to use the programmes, as the majority of them already have pretty good user manuals online- I will include links to them though. You can hold me to that if you like!

Via the seasite mailing list, this article about the difference between underwater archaeology, salvage, and treasure-hunting really got me thinking.

I started off as a diver, then a marine archaeologist, and often came into contact with the strange point of view that if you find something underwater, like something from a wreck, it’s OK to prise it off and take it home to display proudly on your wall, yet you’d hardly go and break the wing-mirror off someone’s car. A friend became an archaeologist for Odyssey, the controversial marine salvage firm, and was ostracised amongst the academic community for his decision, yet he just wanted to put food on his children’s table, and felt that it was better for Odyssey to have some archaeologists trying to do things right than none at all.

Clearly, the difference between archaeology and treasure hunting or salvage is not clear, and is often quite emotive. This latest article, though, makes me feel even more uneasy about this strange blurring of lines. From what I can tell, treasure-hunters felt it was their right to steal things, even when visited by the police and the coast guard.

I don’t think this happens all that often on land, though we have occasionally had to hire 24 hour security for our sites to stop metal-detectorists coming in and digging things up. And sometimes to stop feral children getting in and setting fire to things. But that’s a different story…

The only conclusion I can come to is that people think it’s OK to do this sort of thing underwater, or at sea, because they don’t think they will be seen or caught. So, people behave themselves only because they think they will be censured by their peers, not because of any inherent sense of right or wrong. How depressing…

I had a lightning-fast trip to Nottingham on Tuesday to do a short talk on OSGeo and the role of Local Chapters at the Centre for Geospatial Science’s Geospatial Web Services Workshop. I wish I had been able to attend more of the workshop, as it looked pretty good, but alas I was holidaying at the time. All the presentations were recorded as webcasts and are available on the website. The Centre is looking for feedback on how well this approach works, so do check it out. Unfortunately the firefox browser isn’t supported, which is a fairly large limiting factor in my book.

Below, with luck, is an embedded version of my very short presentation (which is probably of no use whatsoever without my notes, but hey):

So, as always, if you’re interested in being part of the nascent UK Local Chapter for OSGeo then sign up for the mailing list and check out the wiki. I have some ideas for things that we might get involved in and I’ll be developing them over the next couple of weeks and I’ll post just as soon as I can make some coherent sense of them.

It would appear that we are having a little issue with our downloads site, where portable gis is hosted. Not sure exactly whether the cause is human intervention, voodoo, or accident, but it would appear that portable gis is not currently available to download, even though it’s there when I ftp in. Ho Hum.

Anyhow, I’m off for a couple of days diving now, in sunny Scotland, so unless my colleagues miraculously fix the issue over the weekend I won’t be able to sort it until next week some time. I’ll let you know…