GIS applications for the archaeological analysis of a medieval town: Pisa, Italy

The main use of GIS in archaeology is connected to regional research or management of excavation data sets. The use of GIS for urban archaeological research is far less extensive. The urban GIS about the medieval town of Pisa contains all archaeological data from occasional findings to modern stratigraphic excavations, geographical data, historical cartography data and urban data, each described by the geometrical shape (point, line, polygon) that best represents each feature. The distinguishing environmental context to which the town is connected is characterized by a complex hydrographic system; GIS analysis enabled us to study the relationships between the urban transformations and the surrounding environment. The article explains how geostatistical analysis allowed us to create a model of the ancient landscape and how the use of map algebra was useful in understanding the medieval environment. The difficulty in finding raw archaeological data, that is, all the excavation and fieldwork recording (planning of context, context recording sheet, photographs, findings quantification sheet), suggested the necessity to create an open digital archive and to provide possible standardization of digital formats, metadata records and archaeological data recording, so as to allow a comparison between the data.