Durres Regional Archaeological Project GIS Files

This folder contains the files used in 2002 for the Durres Regional Archaeological Project (DRAP). This project was a surface survey of the Durres, Albania region conducted under the auspices of the International Center of Albanian Archaeology in Tirana and the Department of Classics at the University of Cincinnati. The citation for the main publication of this research project is:

Davis, J.L., A. Hoti, I. Pojani, S.R. Stocker, A.D. Wolpert, P.E. Acheson, and J.W. Hayes. 2003. January 1. “The Durrës Regional Archaeological Project: Archaeological Survey in the Territory of Epidamnus/Dyrrachium in Albania.” Hesperia: The Journal of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens 72 1 (January 1): 41–119. doi:10.2307/3182036.

These files are largely unaltered from their 2002 form used in the analysis of the data.

The background GIS files were digitized from 1:50000 plans of Durres by Chris Dore. This includes the Roads, Powerlines, Water, and Durres (contours) layers. Those were converted into MapInfo 4 for Mac files on site. To those files we added the three Ancient Features layers (AncFeatures, AncFeaturesLines, and AncFeaturesPoints) as well as the Tracts, Sites, and Zones layers.

The original files were created and used in the Albanian National Grid projection, which was defined for us by the Albanian Rescue Archaeology Unit as a customized version of the Pulkovo 1942 GK Zone 24N projection, and that is the current projection of these maps.

At the end of the project the plans were converted from MapInfo files into ArcMap shape files. The original ArcView apr file is included but could not be converted to ArcMap v10 mxd files. The DRAPArcMap.mxd file represents a new visualization of the 2002 shape data.

To open these in ArcMap (lasts opened in v 10.1), you can use the DARPArcMap.mxd file.
To open these in QGIS (last opened in v 2.4) you can use the DRAPQGIS.qgs file.

Other files in this documentation folder can explain the data structure and codes used in the GIS.