Filed under: History 615
This week’s readings focused on the application of GIS technologies in historical research. You would think being a GIS professional that I would have jumped right into this book. Oddly enough, I haven’t gotten past the second chapter yet. After last week I needed a break from all the reading and the school work, so I’ve been lazy this week. Since I haven’t done the reading, I don’t have a whole lot to comment on about it. I did take the time to comment though on both Rosendo’s and Daniel Miller’s blog posts this week. I must admit, reading everybody’s blogs and thinking about the potential of applying GIS technologies to history has got me really excited and I’m interested to see what Prof. Petrik has to add in class tomorrow night.
From PBS’s website:
“This NOVA scienceNOW video shows how experts are using NASA satellite photography to find ancient Maya architecture hidden deep in the rain forest of Guatemala. It’s a marriage of 21st-century technology and centuries-old archeological techniques that has already unearthed some striking Maya remains, including a jungle-covered temple containing an extremely rare, 2,000-year-old mural.”
For some reason the embedding code I got from PBS would not work on my blog, but PLEASE take the time to watch this video which I linked to above. For me, this is probably one of the most fascinating applications of GIS and remote sensing I’ve seen to date. I happened to come across it just flipping through the channels on TV one evening a few years ago. It has stuck out in my mind ever since and I thought that this would be the perfect opportunity to share it with you all. It is more on the archaeological than the historical research side of things, and it is 14:07 long and it doesn’t get to the GIS/remote sensing part until just before halfway, but watch the whole thing, I promise you won’t be disappointed.
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History 615 
Wow!!! I just watched the video. I have never seen it before. I knew that all of this was possible, and I have worked with that sort of imagery before, but this is like having my dreams legitimated! Thank you for sharing this. My husband just started working at a company where he works strictly with landsat imagery and I am going to ask him to watch for this sort of thing anytime he is working with tropical regions. Not to sound like a broken record, but I could use the exact same techniques to locate all of the turpentine camps!! I think you have inspired me to add another component to my final project.
Comment by abradsh32 October 9, 2010 @ 7:07 pmGlad you liked it! For me, what I enjoyed the most about this was the sense of discovery, or uncovering something that hasn’t been seen in hundreds of years, through mapping. I find it exciting to think that while many people would say that at this point in time “everything has been discovered”, as evidenced by Dan’s Arrested Development video he posted a while back, there are forgotten things out there waiting to be RE-found. Like maybe your turpentine camps. Like the woman said at the end of the video clip, “Never hurts to double check”. Right?
Comment by rkpalmerjr October 16, 2010 @ 3:38 pm