Hi Jennifer,
That is a pretty helpfull and easy to understand book by Wescott and Brandon. Nice little CD in there too. You might want to check out Spatial Technology and Archaeology by Mark Gillings and David Wheatley who also wrote a Guide to Good Practice on the subject of GIS'.

Good luck with the new forums and thanks again for all of the work you do with the forum.

I would just get a copy of ESRI ArcGIS and work through all of the examples. Find out what the website is that your state maintains with all of their GIS data, for Mississippi it is called MARIS. Download all of the data for where you live and then repeat all of the examples with local data. In my experience reading about software is no where as useful as actually playing with it. I took several training classes on Geosoft's Oasis Montaj, which is used for processing geophysical data that is usually logged with GPS. It wasn't until I spent a month using it to process my own data that it clicked. It was the same for ArcGIS and then ArcPad on my ruggedized PDA.

Im going to bring this post back up because I have a question but Im not sure if it is related to Jennifer's. Will this books you all are reading explain how to use the programs to create maps?

I have stumbled across 3 or 4 open source geospatial programs and decided to give them a try. One is ossim planet, I believe thats what its called, that I am currently trying to find some info about and I saw another called GRASS. My other question is; What all data do you need to create a map if you were to try and look at an area by yourself? Any cores or anything?

Just getting into what all GIS is used for and how its implemented so I hope these questions don't seem to stupid.

A good overall guide is "Geographical Information Systems in Archaeology" by James Conolly and Mark Lake (2006). Cambridge University Press. You can pick up a copy from Amazon.com.

As for programs, don't know much about the open source products as I am an ArcGIS user, but I hear good things about GRASS which is often the product of choice for students etc on a tight budget. ArcGIS can cost a small fortune but it does include all the cartographic, editing and spatial analysis tools in the one package.

Can't point anyone in the direction of free data for the US, but in Australia there is some great free data at https://www.ga.gov.au/products/servlet/controller?event=DEFINE_PRODUCTS

Cheers.

What would be the most basic yet comprehensive book that I could read on GIS? I have only come to understand GIS very recently, and it seems quite important (and appealing for C.V.) to working in archaeology. Is ArcGIS the most used system? Should I read a book on GIS first and then learn to 'play' around with the software?

Thanks a bunch for any help.