GIS meets the high desert
By Regina Nuzzo
Idaho National Laboratory
August 14, 2004
If he’d only had an office computer and online treasure maps, Indiana Jones might have avoided all those snakes, scrapes and sneaky rivals. Now, archaeologists exploring the southeastern Idaho desert have a new tool that Indy would really die for.
Computer scientists at the INEEL have developed a geographic computer system that sifts through data from various sources to help find and map archaeological sites. The system will save archaeologists time, money – and maybe some digging.
Archaeologists need to protect 12,000 years’ worth of artifacts lying forgotten among the sagebrush and basalt on the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory’s 890-square-mile desert site.
To help them, scientists in the INEEL’s Ecological and Cultural Resources Department developed a computer program that merges data about the history, anthropology and archaeology of the terrain into one integrated system.
