Final Project: The Early Dynastic Mastabas at Saqqara – A Spatial Analysis

Details of a group assignment by a member of the UCLA class that conducted this interesting exercise.

Published archaeological plans of north Saqqara are laid on the satellite imagery, geo-referenced, and the building footprints are traced into the GIS and digitized:

Image by Aria Klucewicz

“Methods: Using a basemap given by GIS, I georeferenced 8 different maps of the necropolis. One of the maps has 1m contour lines, which I vectorized using ArcScan. I then added elevation values by hand. Several of the maps had the tomb locations outlined, although there were discrepancies in size and location. I made a best estimate to draw polygons in the tomb locations…”