Over the last two weeks, we were tasked with a large multi-step project using data from the archaeological survey of the Valley of Oaxaca, which is not available in digital form. First, we needed to georeference a topo map showing the survey grid in order to tie the data to the correct locations in GIS. Each student was assigned two or three grid squares to digitize. Here is my section of the survey grid, digitized and overlaid on a topographic base map.
For me this was the most challenging part of the lab--I was not able to get the survey grid georeferenced as well as I would have liked, which unfortunately means that the rest of my digitized data is also less accurate than it could be since it's based on those early errors.
The next task was to georeference and digitize maps of the land cover types and survey collection sites for each individual grid square. The sites are assigned numbers for each time period represented by the artifacts collected. My maps are a bit simplistic, but they do what they need to do.
Finally, graduate students had an extra task, to join a data table containing more information about the various sites to the collection sites shapefile. One type of data included in the table is population estimates for each site, so the final map shows one of my grid squares with sites classified by population size. (Note that this only represents one of the time periods included in the survey.)
Population size does not seem to necessarily correlate well with productivity of the land at/around the site, as most of my study area is characterized by relatively unproductive areas and it still contains at least one high-population site. And although many of the others are small, there are still quite a few of them.
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