Indeed, the physical and natural environment, in terms of geology and landscape, were essential for supportive natural habitats, settlement selection and other components crucial for their survival. These values began to be significant in the early development of human civilisation, when our early ancestors started to have a very close relationship with their physical surroundings. Geodiversity, as the abiotic equivalent to biodiversity, was identified in the 2000s as a natural resource with a wide range of values, several of which are related to some aspects of the physical environment with high cultural and/or social significance. This paper further provides information on group decision or consensus on weights and shows the final rankings for both groups, which are further examined and discussed. While both groups gave their highest value to the scientific/educational indictor, the geoscientists gave their higher rank to the scenic/aesthetic rather than to the protection indicator, the archeologists ranked them opposite, and gave their higher rank to the protection indicator and lowest rank to the scenic/aesthetic indicator. The results obtained by application of the AHP showed that there is a difference in indicator weights. Two main groups of expert respondents, geoscientists and archeologists, were surveyed and gave their criteria weights.
For this purpose, the authors used a AHP (Analytical Hierarchy Process), widely used in decision-making analysis, to define the criteria weights and rank the indicators. The principal aim of this study is to show the results of the application of a GAM’s (Geosite Assessment Model) main values, rank indicators and sub-indicators according to the experts’ preferences and attitudes, as it was presumed that they are not of the same importance.
Because such scientists have different educational backgrounds and use different research methods it was expected that they might value archeological sites (or geoarchaeological geosites) somewhat differently. Geoarcheology is a term used to describe the work of experts who deal with the archeological record and combine the expertise of their different disciplines, mainly archeology and geology.
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