Using 3D Geographic Information Systems to Understand Settlement Decisions at Calakmul

Summary

In 1982, fifty years after the Carnegie Institution of Washington surveyed and mapped sections of Calakmul, a project under the direction of William J. Folan began mapping the site. The completed map published in 2001 covers 30 square kilometers of the ancient site. Many printed maps or datasets like those from Calakmul created with laser total stations or conventional surveying equipment can provide the essential geospatial information to produce accurate topographic maps and 3D map objects within a Geographic Information System (GIS).The methods we developed to transform and integrate published maps of Calakmul into a three-dimensional GIS provide new perspectives about the site. Archaeologists can employ methods presented in this paper to represent archaeological sites as three-dimensional interpretations while preserving iterative analytical capabilities designed into modern GIS. The GIS preserves the fidelity of projected geospatial map entities, allowing the researcher to perform complex analytical operations to reveal new information related to organization of the settlement and location rationale.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Current Archaeological Research: Applications in Three-Dimensional Geographic Information Systems   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage