[Aztlan] MA: Electronic Atlas of Ancient Maya Sites - major update

[Witschey, Walter]

We wish to pass along to the members of Aztlan, and to the subscribers of Mexicon...

There have been significant upgrades to the Electronic Atlas of Ancient Maya Sites, as of mid-December 2008.

The Atlas web site is maintained at

http://MayaGIS.smv.org

Major changes are as follows...

1. A significant number of new sites have been added to the Atlas, with a large group of those coming from the MARI map of 1940, and previously unrecorded in the Atlas. All site locations from this map have been digitized and added to the database.

Please see this address for the MARI map itself, now available on line: http://www.tulane.edu/~mari/Publications/Map.htm

We extend our thanks to Dr. E. Wyllys Andrews, Director, Middle American Research Institute, (MARI), Tulane University, for making this data available.

We appreciate as well the new GPS data supplied by Dr. Karl Herber Mayer, Dr. George Stuart, Dr. Anabel Ford, and others.

2. The most recent revision of the SRTM DEM* data released by NASA has been used to recompute elevations for the Maya area. Please see the map at http://mayagis.smv.org/maps_of_the_maya_area.htm

* SRTM DEM = Shuttle Radar Tomography Mission- Digital Elevation Model, flown on STS-99, Dr. Momoru Mohri, the first Japanese astronaut, as mission specialist. The surface remains of the Chicxulub crater, and the related Cenote Zone (Zona de cenotes) are clearly visible in our visualization of elevations. Data from JPL.

3. There are now more than 5,800 sites (Maya sites >5,000) indexed in the Atlas and mapped.

4. A high resolution map with the "zoomify" feature has been added to the site so that you can study close-up views of the map without downloading the entire 83 Mb file. We extend our thanks to Dr. William Ringle (Davidson College) for his suggestions in this regard.

5. The site now includes downloadable Google Earth files that provide layers for Rank I sites, Rank II sites, and sites clearly visible in Google Earth imagery. (KML files of all sites are available to investigators.) Please see this page:
http://mayagis.smv.org/maps_of_the_maya_area.htm


We expect another major revision before the end of January 2009, with a complete gazetteer of the Atlas containing an alphabetic list of sites, and an index of sites by country, state, and municpio.

As always, we welcome new data for the Atlas, and corrections to old data. We stand ready to provide Atlas-based research datasets to bone fide investigators.

Correspondence to WitscheyWR at Longwood.edu<mailto:WitscheyWR at Longwood.edu> or CTBrown at FAU.edu<mailto:CTBrown at FAU.edu>



For Dr. Clifford T. Brown, and me,

Walter R. T. Witschey
Professor of Anthropology and Science Education
Cook-Cole College of Arts and Sciences
Longwood University

Ofc: Chichester Science Center 305E
201 High St.,Farmville, VA 23909

Tel. (434) 395-2942 (voicemail)
Tel. (804) 928-7871
web: http://www.Longwood.edu/staff/witscheywr<http://www.longwood.edu/staff/witscheywr>