Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
The mapping of archaeological sites has its roots in the work of the antiquarians and treasure hunters of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, initially concerned with unearthing beautiful and interesting objects and recording extraordinary sites. Driven by the eighteenth century passion for detailed description, William Stukeley (1687-1765) is credited with the first accurate maps of Stonehenge and Avebury, as well as many smaller sites (Figure 11).
The resources available in the colonial period, along with developments in accurate military mapping, resulted in detailed inventories and mapping of spectacular sites in exotic locations, such as the work done at the end of the eighteenth century by Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt (published from 1809 in the 19-volume Description de I’Egypte). In the same period we see surveys of Babylon and Nineveh. These projects employed skilled draughtsmen and architects, resulting in precise, detailed, and often very beautiful maps.
Nineteenth Century
It was not until the 1840s, in both Europe and the Americas, that systematic excavation anD contextual recording started to develop, along with attempts to understand the past based on evidence, rather than on fanciful speculation. At this time new understandings of geology and biology, and their importance to the interpretation of the archaeological record, were developing. Maya cities were discovered and mapped in Central America, Indian mounds were mapped in Ohio and Mississippi, systematic excavation and recording began at Pompeii and the Archaeological Survey of India was founded.
Twentieth century
The work of Pitt-Rivers and Flinders Petrie, operating at the end of the nineteenth century, and Mortimer Wheeler in the first half of the twentieth century, led to a focus on controlled excavation and stratigraphy rather than the horizontal spatial structure of sites. After the Second World War, we see a shift from stratigraphy recorded in section as the prime document (e. g., Jericho, Maiden Castle) to the use of plans or sequences of plans (e. g., Wroxeter, Pincevent) (Figure 12). A good discussion of developments in the use of site plans is to be found in Stratigraphic Archives: The Archaeological Plan (Harris, 1979, chapter 8; see also Barker, 1993, chapter 8).
In the period after the Second World War, major north American projects recorded and mapped sites in south and central America. The Teotihuacan mapping project started in 1962 is amongst the classics, generating detailed mapping of thousands of structures over more than 30 sq. km. (Figure 8).
Quantification (enabled and significantly driven by the spread of computers) and an increasing awareness of the spatial component of human behavior and the
Figure 11 William Stukeley’s map of Abury (Avebury, 1743). Stukeley was a pioneer of archaeological site mapping at a time when antiquarians were largely interested in the objects of curiosity dug up from sites rather than their context.
Figure 12 Pincevent Section 36 (published 1972) a Magdalenian occupation near Paris, France. The plan shows lithic debris from a single occupation layer sealed by fine alluvial deposits. Finds were recorded by outlining on low-level vertical photographs of each meter square, which were then combined into an overall plan by tracing on large sheets of drawing film. The plan also shows the excavation grid and hypothetical hut outlines interpreted from the distribution of archaeological material. (Reproduced with permission of Leroi-Gourhan, A. and Brezillon, M. 1972, Fouilles de Pincevent: Essai d’analyse ethnographique d’un habitat Magdalenien. Paris: Editions du CNRS.)
Significance of scale, led to a variety of projects focusing on detailed analysis of site mapping data, including the use of statistical measures of spatial association and the visualization of artifact distributions as density plots, contours, or interpolated 3D surfaces (Figure 13).
Useful overviews of development of archaeological practice can be found in Willey and Sabloff (1993) for the Americas, and Daniel (1975) for Europe.
Modern
The last couple of decades have brought even more rapid technological change - personal computers, digital surveying instruments, GPS, mapping and visualization software and the Internet - coupled with reflection on the ownership and meaning of the past. Site mapping has had to adapt to new, more efficient tools and to new requirements driven by Cultural Resource Management, community participation, global access, and the pressures of development and contract archaeology. Commercial pressures have forced standardization and recording by rote, while a concern with reflexivity has forced archaeologists to engage with contemporary communities, including indigenous groups and museum audiences, and to modify the ways in which data is collected and used (Figure 14).
World History
