00:00.10 archpodnet Welcome back to episode 188 of the archeotech podcast and we are getting into our primary topic now and that is an article for. 00:09.24 Paul Um. 00:15.80 archpodnet I will just start that over again and that is an article in the September Twenty sec and that is an article in the September Twenty Twenty two issue of the essay. a's archeological record. It's kind of an online magazine and the article is entitled Map. It. Pueblo grande village mapping project and the authors listed are Douglas Mitchell Laurreen Montero Zachary Rothwell Stephanie Sherwood and Stephen Roskanna and you can find this, we'll link to it in the show notes I don't know if you have to have an essay account actually Paul you sent me this link to the whole to the whole magazine to this whole episode or sorry issue and I didn't have to log in to see it. So I think it might just be open I can't yeah. 01:00.49 Paul Right? I think it's open off free access. Yeah. 01:05.80 archpodnet Okay, so we'll we'll link to the and unfortunately you can't like download individual articles. You'd basically either use the link that we'll have in the show notes to view the entire thing in like a magazine style in your browser or you can down pdf download the entire the entire issue so take a look at that and this is a relatively short article but it's. It's pretty cool and I and I do have to note just in case we hear it again. We heard it a little bit last time but um, the big bad wolf is currently trying to blow Paul's house down so you know he might you might might it up in Kansas I don't know where it's going. Nice nice. 01:36.82 Paul Fortunately, this one's brick. 01:42.18 archpodnet So that's the sound you may hear in the background if I can't eliminate all of it. So anyway Paul you found this? Ah now this is called the mapping project but realistically, it's a database project. Um, they're not. They're not necessarily mapping anything I mean they are right now they're mapping new stuff all the time. Probably. 01:53.34 Paul Exactly. 02:01.58 archpodnet But this is an an effort in its overall sense to basically take a hundred plus years of data and figure out a schema in a way to bring all of this data and scalable for future data essentially into 1 geodabase. 02:17.84 Paul Yeah, and that you're pointing out that it's mapping. But it's a database if you look at the ah the authors and who they're associated with most of them are gis specialists and so I think that may have been what caught my eye I mean certainly having map it. 02:27.67 archpodnet Right? right. 02:35.00 Paul Exclamation in the ah as the title caught my eye initially. But ah, but it it you know tickles those things it always interests me. It's mapping its databases. It's Gis. It's the stuff that that always you know interests me professionally as an archeologist. But I also think that you know we all have contact with in one way or another. So I think that there's something here I'd hoped when I looked at it I think it does have a little something for everybody in terms of ideas if not necessarily in terms of concrete approaches to things. 02:56.76 archpodnet Um. 03:04.42 archpodnet Yeah. Right? and to give just a little bit of background for those of you that are not currently looking at the article and you're you know, serving a transect or driving a car or something like that. This site the pueblo grande pueblo grande village essentially is a ho hookum site located essentially right in the middle of phoenix it's in the phoenix metropolitan area and I'm a little sad that when I was in phoenix earlier this year I didn't actually know about this and go see it I think we're going to be passing through phoenix again shortly. Maybe in a couple weeks um or or near there somewhere. So hopefully if we go through there I might go see it because it sounds pretty cool, but this is a settlement again. it's it's hoho come now so to speak. But it's a settlement that began around Eight Thousand six hundred and it's the ancestral place. It's an ancestral place to the I'm going to get this wrong the o odum. 03:42.59 Paul Easy. 03:57.69 archpodnet People um, and it includes a platform mound a ball cart possibly two ball courtts a tower-like structure and thousands and thousands of prehistoric features. So that's essentially what it is and I thought what was cool is one of the first images in this project one of the first images in this article. Is a watercolor map put together by Adolf bandelier in 83 of the primary platform mount and I'm like why don't we do maps of watercolor anymore that just sounds cool. 04:30.28 Paul Ah, it's beautiful and you see that in a lot of the older archeological reports is very visually stunning attractive. Ah if not necessarily always the most accurate and I don't know if this one is particularly accurate or not. But yeah, there is something. 04:33.66 archpodnet Ah, yeah. 04:40.73 archpodnet Sure I do. 04:44.64 Paul Kind of visceral you get when you look at some of these older maps and and artists renditions of sites. 04:48.28 archpodnet Well and and back when I say back when you know we used to do sketch maps all the time I don't really do sketch maps anymore like compass pay sketch maps. It's all Gis. But you know back just so seventy years ago when that would be done on every single site I had a friend who. 04:56.95 Paul E. 05:05.92 archpodnet Was my first dig partner he was in my wedding. He's just he's been my friend for a really long time. Um, and and 1 of the first people I met on my very first archeology project and he told me a while back that kind of a kind of a signature of all archeologists how you do your north arrow if the company doesn't have a standard and I've always thought about that. 05:22.73 Paul And. 05:24.16 archpodnet And I just noticed I didn't notice this on the first read, but his north arrow bandeliers north arrow is like an arrow that goes all the way through the site like the the tail feathers are are on the left side of the image and then the north arrow is like it's an up arrow piercing the site and that is clever I like that. 05:32.20 Paul Um, yeah. 05:36.63 Paul Yeah, it's like a pin that goes right underneath it. It's got a little shadow too If you notice. 05:42.30 archpodnet Yeah, it does. Yeah, it's very artistic. This whole thing is really cool. So I wonder if it was originally black and white I mean you can do a watercolor in graycale of course, but in the article here. It's It's essentially a graycale image I Wonder if it was originally gray scale or if he had some color to it. 05:57.76 Paul Yeah, no idea I've been on projects where we have you know an illustrator that's their job is to do you know technical illustrations of the site or of pottery or whatever but invariably, they're all artists. 06:01.18 archpodnet Yeah. 06:13.77 archpodnet Um, sure. 06:14.94 Paul Too and and some of their artist renderings that they do you know sketches and watercolors and whatnot of things they see or around the site are are really interesting I think that that a kind of enrichment that that could go back into reports. Not necessarily as. 06:24.65 archpodnet Um. 06:34.71 Paul As um, you know primary documentation but but for visual interest I mean that little bit that you just pointed out about that arrow that it's cute. It's funny. It's it's ah it's a little quirky but it works and it doesn't dilute from the rest of the drawing. Ah so bringing in a little. 06:39.22 archpodnet Ensure. 06:46.61 archpodnet Um, yeah. 06:53.45 Paul Kind of more whimsical or you know Touchy-feely human sorts of things into our otherwise dry reports I think is is ah is a good thing. 07:03.90 archpodnet Yeah, and and that's why I like that they put that in here too just to illustrate one of the things that they were that they were trying to catalog with this with this Geo database. But then another figure 4 in here is an artist rendition which I can't imagine this is in the Geota database I mean how would they put it in but they just put it in here. Um, as an artist rendition of the platform mound and. 07:09.31 Paul Are. 07:22.00 archpodnet It's an artist's rendition of the platform mound in in full you know, full usage probably a thousand years ago or less but it's really cool to see that too in an article like this. So. 07:33.81 Paul Yeah, it's the kind of rendition that you'd see in a national geographic about an ancient site. You know people working cooking cleaning sleeping whatever all over the place and you know a nice oblique view of the ah of the site and. 07:38.50 archpodnet For sure. Yeah, um. 07:49.15 Paul Gorgeous landscape in the background. Yeah, it's meant to be evocative. 07:53.36 archpodnet Yeah, even like wall repair and or construction. It's It's really cool. The the all the all the different activities going on here. Um, so again setting the stage a little bit as we mentioned the Pueblo Grande V The Pueblo grande. 07:54.66 Paul Are. 08:06.35 archpodnet Village mapping project I don't know why they didn't go bigger and go for the pueblo venti village mapping project sorry that was a terrible joke I was just a Starbucks ah, ah, but anyway as I said it's it's a geotabase project continuing the efforts of bandelier from over one hundred years ago and again they wanted to create this. 08:10.64 Paul No oh my God I'm out. 08:26.14 archpodnet And and this is kind of the the cool part of this. They wanted to create this as a way to not only catalog everything that's been done to to date but all the ongoing research and then any future research and that's where the the real struggle comes in is trying to figure out um a schema they call it a data schema that. Not only aligns with the museum's goals because this is a museum now in Phoenix but I think it was made a museum I didn't take this note but somewhere around like 1929 or something so for a long time It's been a museum that people could go and look at but they wanted to be able to. Align with the museum's goals of what they want to do in the future. So give them a database that they could query and use and create maps from and do different things from and in certain circumstances but also future data that's collected would easily be able to fit into this geodatabase. So I'm sure Paul with your. Logosh project and other things you're doing this is really speaking your language. 09:21.19 Paul Yeah I mean dealing with multiple databases ah is really ah data sets rather not even databases I mean this goes back so long. The the projects here that it's not just a matter of you know. 09:29.30 archpodnet And. 09:35.48 Paul Converting 1 person's database to another which itself is a huge project or can be a huge project but it's bringing things in that were never really thought of as structured data and how they're going about that so they're they're looking at it from a database centric approach which is how I probably would do it too. 09:44.50 archpodnet Right. 09:52.77 Paul And they show us a couple of their tables and a little bit of their naming schema. Um, and then they're adapting existing spatial data into this spatial database. Um, you know with the intent of you know, like you said using it for research and for cataloging internally within the museum. 10:02.89 archpodnet Right. 10:11.30 Paul But then they also mention that they that they want it so that it can integrate outward to the City of Phoenix's gis if they need to which is a really complex task any step of this is a really complex task and so I don't know how successful they're being with it. Um. 10:20.26 archpodnet Um. 10:23.36 archpodnet Right. 10:28.73 Paul I do know though from having worked with different databases that that can be an extremely challenging thing and it's it's it makes me happy that they're actually trying right because sometimes you look at at disparate datasets and you just go this is just too much work I mean I'm working on a little project here. Um. In New York where I'm helping somebody I work for Crm Company he he's trying to make the data that he collected on a small excavation project look. Like the data that are from ah from another project from I believe about thirty years ago and even that even though he controls his own dataset and to end trying to make it look like this other dataset because that's what the historical society is expecting as the as the deliverable. That's a lot of work and what they're trying to do on this project is orders of magnitude more difficult than that. Ah so yeah, kutis to them for trying and I wish them all the best. But wow when I hear the description in the article of the kinds of challenges that they're having with it. It. 11:31.62 archpodnet Um. 11:42.18 Paul It doesn't surprise me that they are bringing in database and gis specialists to try to get a handle on this. 11:47.74 archpodnet Yeah, for sure for sure All right? Let's take a break real quick and come up and sorry, let's take a break real quick and we'll come back and wrap up this discussion on this mapping slash geotabase article back in a minute.