Geoinformation identification of archaeological tourism areas in the southern federal district

Abstract

The interest in archaeological heritage sites and the possibilities for the development of archaeological tourism have been growing in the world in recent decades. Monuments of archeology are a separate phenomenon in the cultural system and are considered as a separate phenomenon in the field of inheritance and preservation of cultural identity. Revenues from archaeological tourism can be used to preserve archaeological objects and for educational purposes, which actually contributes to the sustainability of archaeological sites, including environmental, social, cultural, political, economic and educational aspects. The need to study the spatial patterns of the distribution of archaeological sites has determined the active use of mapping methods. Geoinformation technologies allow integrating existing registers of archaeological sites and cartographic materials into a single structured geoinformation product. Numerous monuments of material culture, identified on the territory of the Southern Federal District, reflect the successive stages of the cultural and historical development of the macroregion from ancient times to the Middle Ages. Archaeological sites on the territory of the Southern Federal District are conventionally divided into funerary, settlement, and ritual-religious monuments and are of significant interest not only for archaeologists, but also for tourists. The aim of this work is the geoinformation identification of areas of archaeological tourism in the territory of the Southern Federal District. ArcGIS (ESRI) acts as the basic GIS- platform, the initial data are information from the Unified State Register of Cultural Heritage Sites (historical and cultural monuments) of the peoples of the Russian Federation. The territorial distribution of archaeological sites in the administrative-territorial units of the Southern Federal District reflects the degree of archaeological study of the territory and promising areas for the development of archaeological tourism.