I was recently commissioned to take a previously completed report (a heritage impact assessment for a proposed road), by another company, and undertake further stages of work. I had to do additional community consultation and further research in order to ensure that the preferred route option (selected from several routes) avoided or mitigated impact upon known and potential heritage in the project area. Sounds simple? It should have been, but for one glaring error in the original report: The Mapping. There are two important points when it comes to placing maps in heritage reports: make your mapping clear; and you can never have too many maps.
Mapping within modern Cultural Heritage Management (CHM) is often reduced to a Google Earth image with a dot or two, with the result exported into MS Paint and scrawled over. This slap dash methodology will often leave a client, or non-CHM trained reader, wondering what they are looking at and what it all means. This problem of ‘near enough is good enough’ is made worse by trying to put more information than is necessary on the map or using colour combinations that would make a clown’s head spin.
What many CHM practitioners do not realise is that it is important to make maps as clear and concise as possible, as well as ensuring that the labelling on the map is well placed and easily readable. As a case in point, the maps in the report mentioned above were a clutter of competing and similar bright colours, with each route difficult to pick out of the mess.
If the practitioner who made the maps had used a better colour palette things may have been easier. Additionally, the Google underlay never helps, so clearing that out and using the road and cadastral layers would have made things clearer still.
This leads to me second point, in that you can never have too many maps. The best course would have been for different coloured lines on the Google map (if they were that attached to the thing), or on a cleaner base map, followed by five clean base maps, each with its own route clearly shown.
Basically, what this all boils down to is that too few CHM practitioners in this country really know what the are doing when it comes to displaying spatial data for clients who are unfamiliar with heritage. If new graduates want to impress prospective employees, they need to ensure they can not only operate GIS software, but also understand the basics of cartography. Even more important is that the current crop of leading practitioners also learn these basics, as many of the worst offenders are in their ranks. Yes, updating technical skills takes time and money, but it is vital for all heritage practices to stay up-to-date with technology.
The proliferation of highly effective freeware GIS applications, with easy to follow tutorials (many on YouTube) means that there really is no excuse anymore for not accurately and clearly displaying heritage data for your clients. Wikipedia provide a good analysis of various Freeware GIS platforms here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_GIS_software.
