[GRASS-user] Topology of overlapping intra-site archaeological polygons

[Salim Al Razzaz]

Hi all,

this is not really a problem of GRASS by itself since I know that being
topological is a choice made by GRASS, and it surely is a needed choice
in the world of GIS.

However, I happen to work sometimes with material from archaeological
excavations. Mostly intra-site polygons, created by Arc-users,
documenting layers (loci, features, and contexts) of soils overlaying
each others.

The problem here is that these polygons often overlap since the layers
cover each others to different extents. Not only that, but each polygon
has attributes in a db table.
Once these are imported to GRASS and cleaned along the way they change
considerably. Even when the "Do not clean polygons" (v.in.ogr -c) is
checked some polygons lose their connection to the table by being
converted to boundaries without centroids.

I wonder if anyone else have had these issues in some context (whether
archaeology or some other discipline), because I would like to see if
there is some workaround. I have been forced to use QGIS to be able to
check the vectors in these situations, although I would definitely
prefer to do all my work in GRASS.

Salim Razzaz