Methods

Historical research, fieldwork and computer aided design were combined to created a Geographic Information System (GIS) for each site selected. Sites were selected based on amount of previous work completed (from little to full mitigation and restoration) and various combinations of European and Chinese miners at each site (sites that were single ethnicities and dual ethnicities were selected).

Historical research centered on local newspapers, warden’s reports from the goldfields and Rev. Alexander Don’s journals. Don was a Presbyterian minister who spent time in the Canton region of China learning the language to do missionary work. He kept detailed maps and journals of his travels throughout Otago and was an avid photographer. The National Library of New Zealand maintains an excellent online resource of historic photographs and documents at http://www.natlib.govt.nz/

            The fieldwork component consisted of visiting sites with various Global Positioning Systems (GPS) units on loan from the University of Otago ’s Anthropology department. Only visible features at surface were mapped with these units. The two units used were a Trimble Pro-XR and Geoexplorer CE. An unexpected complication occurred when attempting to define a data dictionary for the work, and discovering the data dictionaries for archaeological work are rudimentary at best, and similarly rudimentary ones were used for this project. The GPS data was differentially corrected to aid accuracy and imported into ArcGIS for data integration. For more information on using GPS, go to my GPS Manual written while studying at Otago.

             Once data had been added to ArcGIS, it was combined with many other types of freely available data. This combination, along with ArcGIS’ impressive 3D features allowed for virtual landscapes of each site and the surrounding terrain to be created. These virtual worlds are spatially related to the real world.