[This article was first published on W. Andrew Barr's Paleoecology Blog, and kindly contributed to R-bloggers]. (You can report issue about the content on this page here)

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require(XML)
require(googleVis)
 
 
####functions borrwed from http://statisfaction.wordpress.com/2011/10/05/calling-google-maps-api-from-r/
 
getDocNodeVal=function(doc, path)
{
   sapply(getNodeSet(doc, path), function(el) xmlValue(el))
}
 
gGeoCode=function(str)
{
  library(XML)
  u=paste('http://maps.google.com/maps/api/geocode/xml?sensor=false&address=',str)
  doc = xmlTreeParse(u, useInternal=TRUE)
  str=gsub(' ','%20',str)
  lat=getDocNodeVal(doc, "/GeocodeResponse/result/geometry/location/lat")
  lng=getDocNodeVal(doc, "/GeocodeResponse/result/geometry/location/lng")
  list(lat = lat, lng = lng)
}
 
#### End functions borrowed from http://statisfaction.wordpress.com/2011/10/05/calling-google-maps-api-from-r/
 
# get some names of paleoanthropological sites in France. 
placeNames<-c("Cro Magnon","La Ferrassie","Chauvet Cave","La Chapelle aux Saints", "Le Moustier")
 
#resolve the placenames into latlong
latLong<-lapply(placeNames, FUN=gGeoCode)
 
#format the latlong coordinates into the proper format lat:long
latLongFormatted<-lapply(latLong,FUN=function(x){
 paste(x$lat[1],x$lng[1],sep=":")
})
 
#create a dataframe, formatting the place name string first and making the latlong a vector, not list
plotData<-data.frame(name=placeNames,latlong=unlist(latLongFormatted))
 
sites<-gvisMap(plotData,locationvar="latlong",tipvar="name", options=list(mapType='normal'))
plot(sites)

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