Dear Neil, I would certainly agree with you that we need to spend time
addressing the 'primary' records rather than just playing with the computer.
Indeed that is all I seem to do for weeks on end. However we still need to
supply answers to queries, particularly to development control
consultations. Most require a quick answer, some want an answer immediately
(I assume they think we were just waiting for their call) and the majority
of official consultations have a 'reply or we'll ignore you' time limit,
usually 14-21 days but sometimes as short as five working days.
Even the 'paper' record is not infallible and professional users should
appreciate that the data supplied from the SMR in any format is incomplete,
subject to revision, and contains errors. We attach a disclaimer to this
effect to every printout from the record and it is repeated on our 'request
for data' form. Non-professional users may need extra guidance on this, but
I have yet to meet someone who doesn't understand if you take the time to
explain the problem. This is a fairly standard problem and should not be new
to most archaeological curators or contractors.
The GIS allows me to speed up the process of answering queries, and allows
our Development Control (DC) archaeologist to undertake his appraisals
quickly and consistently. It has helped with error checking on the SMR,
particularly with locational data, but has not removed all the problems with
the data. Simple transcription errors are easily corrected, once you spot
them, but other problems are more obdurate. One such is 'Fuzzy Space' i.e.
what you do with sites that are insufficiently well spatially referenced,
e.g. Mr Smith reported a prehistoric burial mound 'near Anytown'. If you
accept this as a valid site - Mr Smith may have provided sufficient
information to show that it wasn't made up - then how do you plot it on the
SMR? The paper map approach adopted in this SMR back in the 1970's was to
write the SMR number assigned to it on the margin of the OS 1:10,000 quarter
sheet that contained 'Anytown' with a pencil line joining the number to the
placename on the map. This is not a solution on a GIS where a site needs a
definite location. Drawing a polygon on the GIS to surround 'Anytown' is a
possible solution, but where do you set the boundaries? Come to that how
(without full excavation information) do you set the polygon boundaries for
the majority of site types? few will have clear, definable edges you can
draw a line around. You can use your professional judgement/estimate/guess
boundaries, but what we really need is a boundary that shades out, rather
than an abrupt line. Unfortunately this is not yet available in ArcView.
This is perhaps just a practical reflection of a more theoretical
difficulty, but is still important.
Peter Iles
-----Original Message-----
From: Neil Campling [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 02 October 2001 10:19
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Standard Symbols /Icons & SMR GIS Use
Dear All,
I think there is general concensus in favour of standard GIS icons /
"symbologies" [ugh], but one shouldn't under-estimate the problems with
software and hardware transliterations. Each of our printers in the office
reproduce symbols differently even though they're mapped the same on the
screen. And different monitors show the same thing differently on their
screens. Then of course there is the usual problem of the GIS software
itself. GIS standardisation is an issue whichn will need to be takled
internationally, as Dr Southall notes.
With respect to Pete Iles summary, I would suggest that many SMRs still need
to spend a significant amount of time checking "primary" records, rather
than computerised records, to deal with development control work. Some of
us don't have enough GIS "layers" or linkages to digitised information to
conduct 95 percent of searches by computer. And are there any national or
international schema / indexing systems to guide us in setting up
standardised layer sequences or linkages, or what those layers should
contain in terms of content and symbol ??
Cheers,
Neil
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