Computing, GIS and Archaeology in the UK

I have just stumbled upon the ESRI Mapping Center and, while I had been following their rss feed for a while, I didn’t know about the wealth of useful information that they have been putting together for creating attractive maps. A lot of the tips can be applied to other software packages too- not just ESRI.

I particularly like the article on historical maps, or how to create an authentic looking treasure map. The section on “Ask a Cartographer” also looks promising, although there aren’t many questions up there yet. ESRI are also reissuing Eduard Imhof’s book Cartographic Relief Presentation, which is a bit of a classic in the field of cartography, so watch that space carefully.

BTW, in a low-key way I’m celebrating because this is the 50th post on archaeogeek. For those that know me and my short attention span, this is quite an achievement!

Five years after warnings that the war in Iraq would damage some of the world’s most important archaeological finds, the Guardian reports that the Americans have come up with a sure-fire way of protecting the monuments. The most powerful military in the world has issued another set of playing cards, with such exhortations as

“Drive around, not over, archaeological sites” (Five of Clubs)

Good work guys. That will do the trick. The article is heartbreaking, and the links to previous articles on the subject are just as bad.

Doh!

A simple test:

1. Find a copy of Microsoft Excel
2. Format the fist column as a date
3. Type 18/12/1901 in the first cell. Excel will recognise that as 18 Dec 1901
4. Type 18/12/1564 in the next cell down. Excel will think this is a string and leave it as it is

Go figure…

Luckily, Open Office realises that history goes back further than 1900. The Open Malaysia blog goes into the details of this, and I don’t claim to understand the whole story but the upshot of all of it is that this is an application level restriction that affects the native Office formats rather than the xml export formats, and it is being proposed as an ISO standard to come into force in September.

I can’t put it better than the Open Malaysia blog:

“…please avoid the native file formats of [Microsoft Office] if you are a Islamic historian, Renaissance archivist, Medieval coin collector, or someone who just has to work with dates prior to the 20^th Century. “

Best stick with Open Office then!