This is week number two for UWF Special Topics in GIS Archaeology, and again it was very interesting! We basically are using satellite images from Landsat in order to refine the terrain features located below with the end result of locating hidden Mayan ruins or pyramids. It is very technical work, but will be beneficial in the end and can be used to find sites all over the world.
We created different map documents using the "image analysis" feature of ArcMap, which basically takes different "bands" of the color spectrum and combines them in various ways in order to benefit from their specialties. The human eye can only see in 3 spectrums, but there are many other wavelengths that can help us to see through obstacles such as darkness, clouds, or haze. Also, changing up the colors can help us contrast certain features of the jungle that might have been changed by falling plaster, building collapse, etc. This is a relatively recent extension of GIS and archaeology due to better satellites and commercial data that has become available for analysis. In the last several years many sites have been found or located because of this technology.
