More Armchair Archaelogy using Google Earth

Back in 2006, Scott Madry made news by with some archeological discoveries in France, and was first given the name of an “armchair archeologist” to describe a person that uses Google Earth (or related software) to make significant archeological discoveries in other areas of the world.

More recent examples include the discovery of a buried Peruvian pyramid and meteor craters in Australia and the Saharan Desert.

However, today’s story takes those to a whole new level, with David Kennedy of Perth, Australia discovering nearly 2,000 archaeological sites in Saudi Arabia!

To be sure of what he was looking at, Kennedy had a friend in Saudi Arabia visit a few of the sites to make sure they weren’t just shadows or other natural formations. His friend was able to confirm his discoveries, as seem in the image below:

ground-level.jpg

Details of these finds and the methods used to uncover them have been posted in the Journal of Archaeological Sciences

As Curt Hopkins at ReadWriteWeb points out, tools such as Google Earth won’t allow archaeologists to do all of their work from a computer. However, we’ve already seen many examples of how data discovered in Google Earth can be used to pinpoint locations to dig, potentially saving many hours.

Geoportal Extension to Become Open Source

Despite code documentation and samples as included on the Geoportal Resource Center, implementers of the Geoportal Extension have continued asking for source code access to support integration with content management systems, map viewers, desktop etc.

Esri listened to these requests and I am happy to be able to announce that:

the Geoportal Extension will enter a next phase in its evolution and become a Free and Open Source solution from Esri.

Seven years ago we created what was then called the GIS Portal Toolkit as a software and services solution, based on code from a number of earlier projects and prototypes for data discovery and map viewing.