16th January 2013, 09:01 AM
Yes and no. The way I read it, what you're suggesting is more akin to the more recent incarnations of the National Mapping Programme, but for excavation data? Well, this would certainly be petty awesome, and certainly the way things should be heading. There are already glimpses of what could be done, through things like the LRC digital atlas. I would see HERs and planning archaeologists having role to play, but, the question is, is this really an HER? Would we want HERs to do this? IMHO, probably not -the HER indexes data, for an at-a-glance overview of the archaeological resource of a given area. In other words, it summarizes up to the site / major site component level. On a good day it'll cross reference between sites and record finds. But they're not geared up for processing this sort of data.
To plot the feature data is a different level of detail - more like consulting primary archive, albeit multiple site plans drawn together in the same place as vector data.
I think there would be better ways of implementing it than via an HER.
I would see this as something new, and something new is something that can be designed better than what has gone before. Ideally there would be some form of national portal, where data could be uploaded (archaeology doesn't stop at the administrative boundary, plus it would by-pass all that malarky with one HER wanting MapInfo and another wanting Arc etc) and served back via a web mapping service or next generation equivalent (bit like Google maps, but it would open as a file in your in-house system, allowing you to query and manipulate data) to whoever needed it. It would also securely archive data, which HERs definitely cannot do. In this system, there would be a country-wide level playing field where exactly the same thing would be expected of everybody so there would be no surprises. Legacy systems could perhaps be co-ordinated by HERs/contractors bidding for money (to who? How? No idea, this is just a pipe dream).
While we're at it, the system should be able to use terrain modelling, so we have the capacity to plot site elevation and drape data over the topography...
To plot the feature data is a different level of detail - more like consulting primary archive, albeit multiple site plans drawn together in the same place as vector data.
I think there would be better ways of implementing it than via an HER.
I would see this as something new, and something new is something that can be designed better than what has gone before. Ideally there would be some form of national portal, where data could be uploaded (archaeology doesn't stop at the administrative boundary, plus it would by-pass all that malarky with one HER wanting MapInfo and another wanting Arc etc) and served back via a web mapping service or next generation equivalent (bit like Google maps, but it would open as a file in your in-house system, allowing you to query and manipulate data) to whoever needed it. It would also securely archive data, which HERs definitely cannot do. In this system, there would be a country-wide level playing field where exactly the same thing would be expected of everybody so there would be no surprises. Legacy systems could perhaps be co-ordinated by HERs/contractors bidding for money (to who? How? No idea, this is just a pipe dream).
While we're at it, the system should be able to use terrain modelling, so we have the capacity to plot site elevation and drape data over the topography...