Geomeasure: GIS and Scripting for Measuring Morphometric Variability

ABSTRACT

This paper presents Geomeasure, a methodological tool developed to recover typometric information with a twofold objective. First, to speed up the process of gathering data by automatizing the way in which it is recovered. Second, it adds higher accuracy and the possibility of re-measuring archeological items without further directly interacting with the piece. Based on a combination of R scripting with GIS features, Geomeasure is at the time able to automatically gather 125–130 typometric variables per archaeological item, with the only input of vectorized photographs. It can be used as a reliable methodological aid to extract detailed information on patterns and trends of shape variability. The system has currently been applied over a sample of 2,000+ geometric microliths in the Eastern Iberian Peninsula. The performance results of its application are on display, and the system is compared to other methodological approaches currently in use for capturing shape variability.

KEYWORDS:

• R Programming Language
• QGIS
• typometry
• measuring protocols
• geometric microliths

Acknowledgments

This research has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness grant HAR2015-68962-P “Dinámicas evolutivas y patrones de variabilidad cultural de los últimos caza-recolectores y el primer Neolítico en el este peninsular (7000-4500 cal. BC)”, under the MINECO pre-doctoral grant BES-2016-076578, within the aforementioned project, and by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities grant PGC2018-096943-B-C21 “CHRONOEVOL: Cronología de alta resolución y evolución cultural en el este de la Península Ibérica (circa 7000–4000 cal BC): Una perspectiva multiescalar”. The author would like to thank the advice and comments of Oreto García-Puchol, Joaquim Juan-Cabanilles, Agustín Diez-Castillo and Salvador Pardo-Gordó, the help with the photographs of Martina Basile, and the anonymous reviewers, whose comments greatly improved the quality of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Alfredo Cortell-Nicolau started participating in archaeological excavations from 2014. He obtained Master's Degree from the University of València. Alfredo is pursuing PhD studies from 2016. He has attended several archaeological meetings, both national and international, including EAA and UISPP meetings. He has published some individual papers, and contributed in several national and international papers.

ORCID

Alfredo Cortell-Nicolau http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1982-6403

ScopusID: 57202197489

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by MINECO: [grant number BES-2016-076578].