Determining the Geographical Coordinates of Archaeological Sites by Using Old Maps

УДК 902.26 ББК 63.4

Abstract

The problem of high precision determining the coordinates of archaeological monuments arises in the process of analyzing the development of territories by the population in different historical periods. Maps that have more exact position of the objects provide results that are more accurate. Currently, this task is posed in general terms when constructing geographic information systems (GIS) of individual monuments, complexes of monuments or separate territories. Prior to this, archaeologists, in principle, did not have the task of compiling GIS and high-precision determination of coordinates. In solving this task, the main problem is the lack of information on the geographical coordinates of the objects, which is critical if the object itself does not exist in our time. An example is the territory of historical Khorezm, many of whose monuments were lost because of agricultural land development.

It is possible to get the coordinates of the absent monuments by using satellite images of the late 1960-1970s; however, the object under study should be clearly visible from space. If the monument is poorly preserved, the only way to determine its geographical coordinates is to use archaeological maps drawn up, for example, by the Khorezm expedition.

The main idea is that if we determine the local coordinates of monuments that do not exist in our time relative to the monuments that have preserved to our time (we shall call them reference objects), then knowing the modern geographical coordinates of reference objects, we can find the coordinates of non-existing objects. The precision of evaluation of the coordinates is determined by accuracy of the compiled archaeological maps. Therefore, the problem arises of determining the geographical coordinates of the monuments with the greatest possible accuracy using archaeological maps.