[OSM-talk] [RFC] tagging stones in the wild (erratic, balancing, boundary, stone age, artifact)

[Stanislav Brabec]

It seems that mapping features lack stones. In a flat country, any
bigger stone has its local name and it is an important orientation
point. But OSM now lacks any classification and rendering of stones. If
you look at Stonehenge, you see just two points in the mapnik map.

Some of stones use tourism=attraction, some use natural=stone
(unofficial), some of them use historic=monument or historic=memorial,
some use amenity=place_of_worship,religion=stone_age_druidic
or tourism=artwork.

Let's try to classify it. Note that sometimes it is not possible to
decide the history of the stone and assign correct tag and we have to
consider it as a generic stone.

I would like to propose a new tag for point (a stone), way (a line of
stones), and area (area with stones)


Generic stone
=============
Just a stone in the wild without any known story.

natural=stone (German wiki already documents this tag)
optional:
size=large (several tons), medium (can be moved by few people), small
(can be moved by a single persons)
count=number of stones (maybe size=large,medium count=1,5 could mean
1 large and 5 medium stones)


Balancing boulder (wobble stone)
================================

A stone in an unstable position. A small power allows the stone to be
wobbled. Some of them are natural, some of them are human made or human
moved.

Mark as generic stone plus:
type=balancing (or type=wobble, comment from any native English?)


Erratic boulder
===============

A boulder moved by a ice code during the ice age. It has a significantly
different composition than stones in the nature around.

Mark as generic stone plus:
type=erratic


Boundary stone
==============

Single, several or many boulders moved by a human to mark boundary of a
ground, or just moved away from a cultivated area. Most of them has just
a natural shape, but some of them may have some carving.

Natural stone mark as generic stone plus:
type=boundary

Stone with carving: I am unsure (artifact or still a natural stone)


Stone age artifacts
===================

I am not sure, whether these stones should use natural=stone (they
consists from a natural stone and something it's impossible to
discriminate) or historic=... or even place_of_worship (the religion is
very unsure for most of them, and even religious purpose is not sure)

Here a list of probably most common types.

type=
menhir: vertically placed stone (most of them are lone stone, but some
of them consist from more stones)

dolmen: a set o stones with a flat stone roof

human_made_area: area with stones following certain idea

human_made_array: array of stones - area consisting of a stone line

stone_image: stone image consisting of hundreds or thousands small
stones


Other artifacts
===============

Stones placed in memory of something may be historic=memorial,
sculptures may be tourism=artwork... I am not sure.


________________________________________________________________________
Stanislav Brabec
http://www.penguin.cz/~utx