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The Megalithic Portal and Megalith Map : Index >>
Portal Talking Shop >> Google Earth
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Google Earth |
JohnLindsay
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|  Posted 30-04-2012 at 11:58
I'm exploring what can be done with this, and how to make some layers. The historic view shows back to about 1999 which means for rescue archaeology, since then, you can see the site before the scraping. This will be mainly for things like cursus plural rather than megaliths but what might be interesting is then to layer the archaeological dig time the before rescue time and the now thing time so people can see things like Tower Fen, which was the first thing I looked at.
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JohnLindsay
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| Posted 30-04-2012 at 12:20
Then I found Andy's google earth on this site!
The first matter on my machine is the gesturing which normally would move one around the window in google earth zooms one in and out, so one has to relearn a new gesture package!
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JohnLindsay
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| Posted 30-04-2012 at 12:30
the next thing I notice is that google earth keeps lat/long at the same level of granularity no matter what layer of the map you are at. There is I think a role for being about to change the level as you zoom through layers, so you may use co-ordinate spaces to define place names at different layer levels. I tried to do this with mountain regions in the 1980s using the Times Gazetteer.
In part this overcomes the matter of county organisation for places on the borders of countries need to be grouped, and those groups don't have names but they can easily be selected by dragging, then using the higher level lat/long to define a space which is defined within the terms place name space.
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JohnLindsay
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| Posted 30-04-2012 at 12:32
that google earth doesn't do it doesn't matter, for it is easy enough to do it oneself. The thing I'm trying to do at the moment is to make google earth an interface to the library catalogues within the university of London, and in parallel with the concepts in the Royal Society People and Planet report, in preparation for the UNCSD. We need the neolithic.
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Andy B
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| Posted 30-04-2012 at 13:08
What do you mean by granularity?
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JohnLindsay
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| Posted 01-05-2012 at 11:25
that is a good question, it is a bit like scalability... scale is absolutely fundamental to most universes, so too I think is granularity, like a grain of sand, or a stone, or a rock, a microlith to a megalith... I use granularity too to mean terms in a controlled vocabulary, and these combinations seem to me really important now that so much is dependent on which layer you are in, so then I'd have to explain layer too.... with words and things, there is no end,
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JohnLindsay
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| Posted 01-05-2012 at 11:57
Now I have my first case. The book on Flag Fen, 2005, reprinted 2011, shows the post alignment as Pryor calls it, stretching from Flag Fen to Fengate, nearly a kilometre. The OS Explorer shows only a couple of settlements. The wooden thing, which strikes me as absolutely amazing, has been destroyed by the drainage of the fens, but in its time must have been absolutely stunning. Whether there is a connection with Etton and Maxey, or the Tower Fen, which Pryor doesn't mention, but shows up well on google earth after the extraction, and then through the history file to before the extraction would begin to join together places and make some connections. Looking at the Pryor map and then at the OS Explorer, I think that the post alignment, which could be called perhaps a cursus or a causeway or something special, leads directly to the cathedral!
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JohnLindsay
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| Posted 01-05-2012 at 15:13
Google earth has installed itself on my machine to that the site types panel opens in the places folder. Not sure whether this is how it should work? I then identify causewayed enclosure and henge around Peterborough and a good group emerges. This connects with my words and things thread, with place names, for what is sometimes in the literature is called Etton is also sometimes called Maxey, and I think that points to one thing, and not two.
Now the matter of what the thing from Flag Fen is called, by Pryor post alignment, which if we were to call it a causewayed, or cursus, or whatever, in which category would the one kilometre thing, rather than the site actually at Flag Fen appear?
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JohnLindsay
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| Posted 01-05-2012 at 15:14
ah, there is a timber circle too, that brings up a couple more, but not the Flag Fen site. I presume the obvious thing is for me to go to the Flag Fen search and see what it has been allocated.
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JohnLindsay
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| Posted 01-05-2012 at 15:19
ancient village or settlement says one post, but that isn't it, museum says another, it pops up for museum, but quite a long way away from where I think it actually is. I know from google maps that when data is entered at one level or layer, then it is quite a long way off when you are at a more precise layer, so that might be what is happening here. It is actually just about on the Cat's Water where it joins with the Dyke, but I don't have my OS Explorer with me at the moment.
Neither the village nor the museum though is the one kilometre thing Pryor is writing about in life and death.
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JohnLindsay
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| Posted 01-05-2012 at 15:23
I turned on cursus too, and now there is a really good grouping just north of Peterborough showing up. The next step is to identify the literature dealing with each of these places, and the literature dealing with them as a group, if any. At the same time, we need to be able to see then synchronously with the history time line both as it appears now in google earth, which is why we got here, but also with a timeline for pastscape.
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JohnLindsay
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| Posted 01-05-2012 at 15:28
Wessex Museum with its publication Wiltshire Magazine, uses civic parish as a locator level for the names of places, to group them. Although civic parishes are clearly very complicated in the pre history period for we are making part of the matter part of the method, it is a simple and useful way to do it. Many of the identified pre historic things are actually markers on parish boundaries, and parish boundaries are also county boundaries, it does at least mean they would be grouped close together, often with only one or two descriptors, and very rarely three, hardly ever more than that.
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JohnLindsay
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| Posted 01-05-2012 at 15:34
It is really good in google earth that the link to more information takes to the megalith page for the site, and then back to google earth to the google earth. Putting the bibliographic references to the literature into the visit page on the site means the bits come together. There will be the matter though that when the literature deals with a whole group or period, that wont show with each site level detail unless someone makes the effort to do that level of indexing. I wonder whether the higher level of view with a much wider, broader area, would allow one to define areas such as southern england, to which one then could point?
This of course wont sort the matter of one writer calling something a burial and someone else calling it a spring, but let's sort out one thing at a time.
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JohnLindsay
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| Posted 01-05-2012 at 15:38
then somehow, I managed to enter ground level view, and had a zoom across... I didn't even know this existed. Interestingly I have recently bought the google document on sale in Smiths published by mage and it has nothing on google earth at all that I can see. Now I don't know how I entered street view, so will have to play around again.
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JohnLindsay
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| Posted 01-05-2012 at 15:39
ah, found the little drag icon.
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Andy B
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| Posted 01-05-2012 at 16:23
John, please could you leave bibliographic references as 'page comments' (at the bottom of the page) rather than visit logs.
There is room for much more text and you don't currently get web links in visit logs. Visit logs are intended for shorter 'Twitter' style text. If you really want them in your visit log then you could do both.
As for 'granularity', if by that you mean accuracy then it is true that some of our locations are converted from 6 digit OS grid refs so they can be several tens of metres out, if not more. The accuracy is usually indicated in the text with 'Acc'.
If you do find the more accurate locations for sites by browsing Google Earth, please it would help if you could feed that back as a page comment as well. It will be easier if you switch Google Earth to use decimal degrees.
Thanks
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JohnLindsay
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| Posted 02-05-2012 at 11:25
Thanks for all that Andy, given the fun you are having at the moment with mapping in general.
The location of bibliographic references seems to me something which needs more thinking, along the lines of the issue of what refers to one site, to which site does it refer, and then texts dealing with more general issues or things; plus the things which have been found in or near the sites, such as the bronze mirrors.
I do recognise that as a newbie coming to something which is already well established and wonderful, that my muddy sandals are likely simply to add to the much on the carpet. That I am interested in something is my matter, just let me know if I am making too much mud.
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Andy B
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| Posted 02-05-2012 at 13:39
No that's fine, you go ahead. I do take your point about how to create a linked narrative about a group of nearby sites and difficulties over where to put these. That was actually one reason the visit logs were created so if you're wanting to link sites together (and mention things in between which don't or won't have a 'site page) then visit logs would be the way to go.
Each log entry has a 'visit number' and 'visit order' box to use. In which case the first group of sites to link would be visit number 1 and then give each entry an order number 1,2,3 etc.
The plan is that once we have some linked entries like this then the Portal will use the numbered boxes as an index to create a page with the visit logs shown in order down the page. It would also automatically add boxes with information from the main site pagesl, and a map of all the sites in the group.
The intention is to use the visit logs to create a series of authored guides to groups of related sites, each on their own page. This is something that I need to create but that is ultimately what the visit logs should turn into so if you'd like to start us off then please do.
Bear in mind that we're trying to make our guides accessible to people if you can try and write with the general reader in mind that would be helpful.
Cheers
[ This message was edited by: Andy B on 2012-05-02 13:40 ]
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