No-Budget Archaeology: Landscape Archaeology Using Free Data and Software

Summary

Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and remotely-sensed data are now used ubiquitously in archaeology. While these tools offer incredible possibilities for landscape archaeology and can be extremely cost-effective compared to traditional survey methods, they are nevertheless costs that must be borne by research budgets and home institutions. Data acquisition can easily reach thousands of dollars, and industry-leading GIS software platforms require expensive annual licenses. But all hope is not lost for those of us with no budget: many governmental or academic agencies offer free data with fair-use licensing for academic research, and open-source or free-to-use software can perform powerful computations and create publication-quality maps. This poster presents several examples to highlight how no-cost data sources and software can be used to explore the archaeological landscape of the north coast of Peru from 500 B.C. to A.D. 500. Of course, such data cannot address all research questions and fieldwork is always necessary to ground-truth findings, but this poster will give hope to junior academics and professors emeriti alike by showing how you can continue to produce and disseminate new research with nothing more than a computer and an internet connection.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22139