ABSTRACT
So far, we have discussed GIS in a very broad sense. From here onwards, we begin to look in more detail at how precisely the GIS works. As mentioned in Chapter 1, central to any archaeological application of GIS is the spatial database. We use the term to define the entirety of information we have held in the GIS for a certain study area. Any given spatial database must provide for the storage and manipulation of four aspects of its data:
• A record of the position, in geographic space (the locational component) that determines where something is and what form it takes;
• A record of the logical relationships between different geographic objects (the topological component); • A record of the characteristics of things (the attribute component) that determines what geographic
objects represent, and what properties they have; • Thorough documentation of the contents of the overall database (the metadata component).
