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Postscript: GIS and environmental determinism: a parallel text
... Early analytical applications adhered to processual goals such as predictive modeling -using GIS to calculate the probability of locating archaeological sites and correlating variables to human behavior (e.g., Kvamme, 1999;Lock and Harris, 2006;Wescott and Brandon, 1999). However, soon GIS became criticized for being environmentally deterministic; predictive models were criticized because they tended to rely on environmental variables at the expense of "social" variables (Cope and Elwood, 2009;Daly and Lock, 2004;Gaffney and van Leusen, 1995;Kwan, 2002;Schuurman, 1999;Thomas, 1996). In defense of these early applications, GIS tend to preference environmental criteria for two reasons. ...
... Visibility analysis in GIS proved groundbreaking to integrate computational approaches with phenomenological goals affording more reflexive and experiential methodologies (Van Leusen, 1999;Wheatley, 1993). However, GIS practitioners made obvious that GIS has its limitations in regard to human perception because it tends to create abstract realities that reduce human complexity (Gaffney and van Leusen, 1995;Gillings and Goodrick, 1996;Stead, 1995). For example, viewshed applications "critically confuse the concept of 'vision' with that of 'perception', and in so doing simplify once again the full complexity of people-place relations and dynamics" (Gillings and Goodrick, 1996). ...
Until recently Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have held center stage in the archaeologist's geospatial toolkit, and there is no doubt that archaeologists have moved beyond the map—but into what? In the early years, criticisms voicing GIS as environmentally-deterministic were abundant. What methods and tool have archaeologists used to overcome these criticisms? New geospatial technologies such as airborne lidar and aerial photogrammetry are allowing us to acquire inordinate amounts of georeferenced 3D data— but do these 3D technologies help overcome criticisms of environmental determinism? Together—GIS + 3D— can link georeferenced 3D models to underlying data adding a ground-based humanistic perspective lacking in the bird's eye view of traditional GIS. This paper situates GIS and 3D within a semiotic framework to offer some ideas on using 3DGIS to intertwine environmental and cultural factors to work toward new approaches for landscape archaeology.
... Most approaches used the standard tools available in GIS suites: line-of-sight and binary viewsheds. As other authors have already noted (gaFFney and leusen, 1995;gillings et al., 2000), such tools only take into consideration as limiting factors for visibility the characteristics of the terrain and, optionally, the curvature of the Earth, atmospheric refraction, etc. However, they do not account for other, equally important aspects when determining whether a structure or object is perceptible from afar, such as its size, color, contrast with the background, etc. ...
The perceptibility of a prehistoric monument (the property of being perceptible from its surrounding landscape) can be quite difficult to analyse by means of traditional static models. Such difficulty lies in the fact that perceptibility depends upon many other factors beyond simple topographical position, such as size, colour, contrast with the surroundings or even the specific circumstances of the audience, many such circumstances being of an immaterial nature. In this paper, we explore the potential use of Agent-Based Modelling for the analysis of archaeological perceptibility.
... Most GIS deal with temporal variation by the creation of multiple overlays, tenseless 'snapshots' of change. This can have the unfortunate effect of'crushing' landscape history into two dimensions, and 'makes us forget about the previous history of the landscape and the fact that it is part of the living social system' (Gaffney & van Leusen, 1995: 379; see also Castleford, 1991). Attempts to develop a temporal GIS (TGIS) are reviewed by ...
p>Current thinking in the Palaeolithic divides the archaeological record into a succession of discrete ‘cultures’ defined in terms of lithic industries, thus creating ‘points’ of ‘transition’. At the infamous ‘Middle-Upper Palaeolithic transition’ the problems of this approach are exacerbated because the transition being debated is central to our own identity and thus has a long history which strongly influences our current thinking about the ‘nature’ of humanity. As the ‘transition’ from animal to human, Neanderthal to ‘modern’ is seen as being both behavioural and biological, differences in the archaeological record have been explained away as caused by ‘evolution’, applied in a simplistic post hoc , accommodative way.
This ‘top-down’ perspective assumes qualitative differences between Neanderthals and ‘modern’ humans, particularly in terms of their mental abilities regarding abstract through and the ability to structure or ‘design’ activities that occur at some distance in time and/or space. Such assumptions are dangerous in the limitations that they place on the interpretation of the record - hominids, sites, industries, etc., can only ever be ‘modern’ or ‘non-modern’, which both categories pre-defined and pre-‘explained’. In this thesis I argue that, rather than assuming such difference, ‘bottom-up’ approaches need to be developed to reconsider the archaeological record of the ‘transition’ in terms of people, movement and activity.
I argue that both hominid and human populations were inevitably immersed within a four-dimensional world as a fundamental fact of their existence and that, crucially, these ecosystems are not individual and discrete but are inescapably shared with other ‘persons’, whether these are hominid or human, animal, mineral or vegetable, with whom we interact on a daily basis. Thus the archaeological record represents four-dimensional structures of peoples’ habitual, daily activities, comprised of movement and interaction within a four-dimensional ecosystem: the constitutve parts of identity and personhood.</p
... It is obvious that a reduced and abstract description of space can only provide an equally restricted understanding of visibility within the study area. In archaeological applications of GIS two-dimensionality has always been identified as a significant limitation (Harris and Lock 1995, p. 355;Claxton 1995;Gillings and Goodrick 1996;Gaffney and van Leusen 1995;Wheatley and Gillings 2002, p. 241;Harris and Lock 1996, p. 307) and has been considered by some as the main reason why GIS use is restricted to landscape studies and much more rarely expands to intra-site analysis (Harris and Lock 1995, p. 356). It is also one of the main reasons why GIS studies have been criticised by postprocessual theorists that generally disregard the map perspective as a "God trick" (Haraway 1991, p. 189) and "a picture of past landscapes that the inhabitant would hardly recognise" (Thomas 1993a, p. 25). ...
p>The devices used for the communication of meaning in mural painting often pervade pictorial space to reach out into actual space. This fact is often acknowledged in interpretations of Theran wall paintings that have been occasionally concerned with aspects of human experience and engagement with the decorated spaces. However, the reception of Theran murals within their original architectural context has been neither thoroughly nor systematically studied. This is mainly due to the lack of formal methodologies by which human engagement with ancient and partially preserved built environments could effectively be explored. This thesis investigates aspects of the visual experience of Theran wall-painting, and more particularly, the visibility of the murals and its relationship firstly to the iconographic meaning of the painted scenes, and secondly to the social function and significance of the paintings. It introduces a new method of visibility analysis that integrates 3D modelling and spatial technologies (GIS) to take account of the nature of human experience in the built environment which is essentially three-dimensional. The suggested approach also formally addresses the problems of uncertainty and incomplete data impact on archaeological interpretations. Finally, it discusses the issue of human movement which is strongly linked to the visual experience of built space and introduces an agent-based approach that aims to investigate aspects of mobility in populated spaces within the social context of movement in the past. the archaeological record along with their in The above methodology is employed to explore the reception of mural decoration in a visually complex ritual space (building Xeste 3), examining the relationship between visual emphasis in pictorial space and the visual exposure of individual elements of a composition in actual space. In this way, it highlights meaningful patterns in the archaeological record that would have otherwise remained unobserved. The results of the analysis are also suggestive of movement and circulation during ritual performances that could have taken place in the building. Furthermore, the same methodology is used to investigate whether pedestrians traversing the street network could have seen, through open windows, the wall paintings that embellished the interiors of elaborate private houses. The application of visibility analysis offers insights into the social significance and functions of Theran murals, illuminating their possible symbolic role in establishing power relations in the prehistoric society of Akrotiri.</p
... The resulting archaeological modelling therefore departed from the assumption that the location of archaeological remains relates to specific characteristics of the natural environment. In practice, this approach often boils down to locational modelling based primarily on topography, as the only generally and readily available type of high-resolution landscape information, supported by a few other rather generalised and/or roughly reconstructed surface quality data such as soil type, vegetation, slope, elevation, water, and reconstructed micro-climate (e.g., Fischer, 1995;Gaffney & Van Leusen, 1995;Jasiewicz & Sobkowiak-Tabaka, 2015;Kohler & Parker, 1986;van Leusen & Kamermans, 2005;Stančič & Kvamme, 1999;Verhagen, 2007;Wandsleeben & Verhart, 1997). ...
In a world of smart desktop approaches, it can be instructive to return to the roots of the discussion of whether it is possible to model the behaviour of small-scale human cultures based on environmental parameters. Present-day modellers appear to have forgotten this debate, which played such an important role in the anthropology of the early twentieth century. The question was never settled. Around the 1960s, a group of theoretical archaeological modellers decided that it was possible to model the landscape behaviour of hunter-gatherers based solely on the environmental data and thereby ignore social anthropological information supporting the opposing view. This was the beginning of a tradition of archaeological modelling that ignored differences in cultural landscape behaviour in similar environments and over time, the information provided by the developing discipline of landscape ecology, and with that the documented environmental complexity and its inherent small-scale dynamics. It is difficult to detect any scientific rationale behind this conscious archaeological isolation from relevant data provided by other disciplines, and the demand for cheap and fast management methods rather than science-based arguments appears the more likely driver. This presentation traces the history of this cultural “nature versus nurture” debate and discusses its implications.
... The Kayenta Anasazi were monoagriculturists who cultivated corn but their decisions on where to locate their fields and settlement were not based only on access to fertile soils and water but also on intervisibility factors to enhance security, social relations, and spiritual piety. Viewshed analysis has also empowered archaeologists to explore how a place may be imbued with meanings and values to the extent that having a line of sight to that place becomes a primary factor for settlement location decisions (Gaffney and Van Leusen 1995). ...
Spatial land use allocation is often formulated as a complex multiobjective optimization problem. As effective tools for multiobjective optimization, Pareto-based heuristic optimization algorithms, such as genetic, artificial immune system, particle swarm optimization, and ant colony optimization algorithms, have been introduced to support trade-off analysis and posterior stakeholder involvement in land use decision making. However, these algorithms are extremely time consuming, and minimizing the computational time has become one of the largest challenges in obtaining the Pareto frontier in spatial land use allocation problems. To improve the efficiency of these algorithms and better support multiobjective decision making in land use planning, high-performance Pareto-based optimization algorithms for shared-memory and distributed-memory computing platforms were developed in this study. The OpenMP and Message Passing Interface (MPI) parallel programming technologies were employed to implement the shared-memory and distributed-memory parallel models, respectively, in parallel in the Pareto-based optimization algorithm. Experiments show that both the shared-memory and message-passing parallel models can effectively accelerate multiobjective spatial land use allocation models. The shared-memory model achieves satisfying performance when the number of CPU cores used for computing is less than 8. Conversely, the message-passing model displays better scalability than the shared-memory model when the number of CPU cores used for computing is greater than 8.
... The Keyanta Anasazi were monoagriculturists who cultivated corn but their decisions on where to locate their fields and settlement were not based only on access to fertile soils and water but also on intervisibility factors to enhance security, social relations, and spiritual piety . Viewshed analysis has also empowered archaeologists to explore how a place may be imbued with meanings and values to the extent that having a line of sight to that place becomes a primary factor for settlement location decisions (Gaffney and Van Leusen 1995). The heuristic value of viewshed analysis in GIS studies has offered insights into how the landscape could be read as a contested social space. ...
Viewshed analysis is one of the most frequently used geographic information system (GIS) tools in archaeology. With availability of large and high-resolution terrain data, viewshed analysis offers a significant computational opportunity while also posing a challenge in GIS and landscape archaeology. Although a number of studies adopted high-performance and parallel compu-ting (HPC) for handling the compute- and data-challenge of viewshed analy-sis, there is few archaeological studies involving HPC to address such a chal-lenge. It could be because of the complexity of HPC techniques that are diffi-cult for archaeologists to apply. Therefore, this study presents a simple solu-tion to accelerate viewshed analysis for archaeological studies. It includes a parallel computing approach with shared-nothing parallelism (each compu-ting node accesses some specific pieces of datasets, and it has own memory and storage). Moreover, it is powerful for handling compute- and data-intensive research in landscape archaeology. In addition, the unique features of visibility patterns (irregular, fragmented, and discontinuous), may intro-duce useful information for landscape archaeologists. Thus, we added frag-mentation calculation following viewshed analysis to further examine the in-fluence of visibility patterns. We draw our case study from the metropolitan area of Oyo Empire, West Africa (1600-1830 AD). This parallel computing approach used an equal-viewpoint decomposition strategy on a Windows-based computing cluster. An experiment was designed to evaluate the computational performance of this parallel computing approach. Computing experimental results demonstrate a significant improvement of computing performance compared with the sequential computing method. The results of viewshed fragmentation help better understand the locations of monuments and settlements in archaeology.
... Journal of Archaeological Science 108. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2019.05.004 environmental determinism (Wheatley 1993(Wheatley , 1996(Wheatley , 2004Gaffney, van Leusen 1995), they have nevertheless remained popular, especially when allied with modern spatial statistics which, via their ability to discriminate between first and second order effects (Bevan et al. 2013;Baddeley et al. 2016), potentially offer a more nuanced account of the balance between environmental and social causes of past human behaviour (see e. g. Table 2, which shows which covariates appeared to be better or worse predictors of the location of megalithic tombs in the study area. ...
It is well known that Neolithic megalithic landscapes are the result of complex locational logics governing where communities chose to site their funerary monuments. These logics in turn respond to broader environmental and cultural affordances, and the relationship between these has been a major topic in the megalithic archaeological literature for the last few decades. Thanks to new approaches in spatial statistical modelling, there is now considerable opportunity to revisit traditional megalithic locational concepts from a more systematic point of view, not least in Galician studies (NW Iberian Peninsula). In the paper that follows, we apply such a modelling approach to a large set of megalithic monuments located in the south of Galicia (Monte Penide and surroundings) with a view to exploring locational choices, spatial hierarchy and territoriality in these funerary landscapes. The results indicate that the distribution of megalithic mounds in this region reflects a preference for locations with particular environmental properties, while at a more local scale the spacing of these mounds seems to reflect some kind of social partitioning of the landscape. Via spatial cluster analysis and a further novel method for testing site hierarchy, we conclude that the mound sizes within nine different mound clusters exhibits a non-random hierarchical structure, with a larger mound per group and smaller ones around that, and with what appears to be a preference for the large monument to be at or near the meeting point of several watersheds and upland ridge-routes.
... The topic of scale and, relatedly, the areal unit, has long been debated by, amongst others, Costall (2006), Gaffney and van Leusen (1995), Goodchilde (1996), Harris (2006), Harris and Lock (1990) and Wheatley (2000). Scale has an effect on the interpretation of data and should be chosen carefully. ...
... As briefly alluded to above, the rapid deployment of GIS in a number of disciplines eventually led to debate about whether the technique is simply a tool that can be used for many purposes in a variety of theoretical frameworks, or whether it carries certain theoretical 'baggage' such that its use requires explicit or implicit adherence to particular theoretical principles or assumptions (in geography see Pickles 1999;Wright et al. 1997; in archaeology see Wheatley 1993;Gaffney and van Leusen 1995). Similar questions have been asked of agent-based modelling, although the anxiety seems less widespread and largely confined to two key issues: is the rationality of agents a good model of human rationality and in what sense do social phenomena emerge. ...
This chapter discusses some of the conceptual issues surrounding the use of agent-based modelling in archaeology. Specifically, it addresses three questions: Why use agent-based simulation? Does specifically agent-based simulation imply a particular view of the world? How do we learn by simulating? First, however, it will be useful to provide a brief introduction to agent-based simulation and how it relates to archaeological simulation more generally. Some readers may prefer to return to this chapter after having read a more detailed account of an exemplar (Chap. 2) or of the technology (Chap. 3). Textbooks on agent-based modelling include Grimm and Railsback [(2005) Individual-based modeling and ecology, Princeton University Press, Princeton] and Railsback and Grimm [(2012) Agent-based and individual-based modeling: a practical introduction, Princeton University Press, Princeton], both aimed at ecologists, the rather briefer [Gilbert (2008) Agent-based models. Quantitative applications in the social sciences, Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA], aimed at sociologists, and [Ferber (1999) Multi-agent systems: an introduction to distributed artificial intelligence, English edn. Addison-Wesley, Harlow], which treats agent-based simulation from the perspective of artificial intelligence and computer science.
... However, it is important to remember that the capacity to be noticed is not entirely (or even mainly) based on physical factors: the social or ritual significance of a specific mound might have multiplied its perceptibility, regardless of its remoteness or size. However, this kind of socially-based factors can hardly be managed by either Archaeology or -more specifically-spatial and GIS studies (Gaffney & Leusen, 1995). Nonetheless, very interesting approaches have been carried out trying to determine the possible significance of specific places within the landscape (Rennell. ...
Funerary mounds, whether megalithic or not, feature prominently among the Galician archaeology and their sheer number and monumentality have attracted the attention of scholars ever since the end of the 19th century. The Barbanza peninsula, set in the western coast of Galicia, stands out for its numerous barrows, with a noticeable cluster of those on the high plateau, where spatial analyses were undertaken by researchers in the early 80’.
One of the aspects on which research has most regularly focused regards the relationship between megaliths and movement, not just as the eventual correlation between mound location and paths across the landscape, but on a more general way by assessing the use of building materials or grave-goods of non-local origin.
In the last decade, there has been a renewed effort at surveying the Barbanza peninsula leading to the discovery of scores of new mounds, thus significantly modifying the distribution of these monuments and breaking somewhat the paramount role of the high sierra with respect to this funerary phenomenon. Moreover, by employing new methodologies, such as Geographical Information Systems and spatial statistics, we can observe that mounds are indeed associated with transit routes and, at a local scale, with conspicuous areas more often than, for instance, rock art sites.
Therefore, an image surges forward where megalithic architecture does not act exclusively as a static milestone but, rather, as a dynamic agent linked to a cognitive geography developed by communities in the Late Prehistory that undertake the exploitation of different landscapes and resources, from the very coast to the uplands. In the framework of this process, however, a marked variability can be observed regarding the conspicuity that these monuments might have had in the prehistoric landscape. This may suggest a multiplicity of roles or audiences, ranging from those intended to be real landmarks to others apparently designed to go unnoticed.
... This marks the recent publication of a series of papers dedicated to the implementation and testing of specific variables, concerning case studies in France and the Netherlands. Researchers of these two countries have in fact produced the vast majority of study cases of ALM modelling, and are also at the forefront of actual implementations of 'cognitive' and socio-economic variables involved in theory-driven modelling projects, following the earlier theoretical advances called for by British, Dutch and American scholars such as Kvamme, Kammermans, Wheatley, Gaffney and Whitley (Kvamme 2006;Whitley 2005;Wheatley 2004;Gaffney et al. 1995;Kamermans 2008;Verhagen et al. 2007). The first aspects to have been incorporated were the accessibility and the visibility, through the already well developed least-cost path densities and viewshed analysis (Verhagen et al. 2013). ...
http://hdl.handle.net/1887/53292
The rural settlements of the Roman Somme (Northern France) are poorly understood in terms of site location. Although the physical landscape of the area is rather smooth, local variations influence the distribution of sites. Furthermore, the socio-economic context around Roman farms plays an important part in human behaviours of settlement creation. Predictive modelling constitutes an effective tool for dissecting settlement patterns and understanding their locational parameters through the quantification and evaluation of formal hypotheses. A specific methodology was tailored for the subject and inspired by theory-driven and cognitive predictive modelling approaches. It involves the creation of multivariate models through weighted map algebra, which are then confronted with the distribution of archaeological settlements in four micro-regions along the Somme River.
The correlation of the variables with archaeological location indicates that slopes, landforms and the relative distance to rivers are the main influential factors of the physical environment. Socio-economic parameters such as the relative distance to cities, secondary agglomerations and Roman roads are even more influential. Notwithstanding the lack of representation of settlements in the Late Roman period, site location follows similar trends from the 1st century AD to the end of the 4th century AD. Villas prefer economically well connected locations, as do stone-built and post-built settlements. Nevertheless, no parameter can be considered as deterministic in site location. This demonstrates the diversity of choices and influences which favoured the creation of Roman sites in the landscape.
Résumé
La compréhension de la distribution des établissements ruraux de la Somme romaine est particulièrement lacunaire. Si l’environnement physique de ce département est plutôt doux, les variations locales ont une influence sur l’emplacement des sites. De plus, le contexte socio-économique qui encadre les fermes romaines joue un rôle important dans les comportements humains entrant en jeu dans la fondation des établissements. La modélisation prédictive constitue un outil performant afin d’analyser la distribution des sites et en comprendre les paramètres d’influence, à travers la quantification et l’évaluation d’hypothèses formelles. Ce mémoire applique une méthodologie spécifiquement conçue pour ce sujet et qui est associée à la modélisation prédictive fondée sur la théorisation des comportements humains dans une approche explicative. Ceci implique la réalisation de modèles multivariés pondérés, lesquels sont ensuite confrontés à la distribution des sites archéologiques dans quatre microrégions longeant la rivière de la Somme.
La corrélation des variables avec la distribution des sites indique que les pentes, les formes du relief et la distance relative aux rivières constituent les principaux facteurs d’influence de l’environnement physique. Toutefois, les paramètres socio-économiques comme la distance relative aux cités, aux agglomérations secondaires et aux voies romaines sont encore plus influents. Malgré le manque de représentativité des établissements ruraux de l’Antiquité tardive, les mêmes tendances sont perceptibles dans la distribution des sites depuis le 1er siècle apr. J.-C. jusqu’à la fin du 4e siècle apr. J.-C. Les villas sont plutôt localisées dans des emplacements bien connectés au réseau économique, mais il en va de même pour les établissements maçonnés et en matériaux périssables. Néanmoins, aucun paramètre ne peut être considéré comme déterminant dans la distribution des sites. Cela évoque une importante diversité des choix et des influences favorisant certains emplacements du paysage.
... Archaeology has had a long love affair with GIS. There were concerns early on that GIS would lead us down a path to environmental determinism (Gaffney and van Leusen, 1995). The evidence to the contrary is all around us in the variety of uses we have put GIS to (McCoy and Ladefoged, 2009). ...
... It might be suggested that the potential of GIS as a relatively "black box" technology for comparatively computer illiterate archaeologists may have had a number of significant impacts. The increasingly pervasive use of GIS to display, if not always analyse, archaeological data led to a long-running debate on the nature of GIS to wider post-processual theory within archaeology [12]. The view from technologists working within archaeology was, perhaps, less frequently voiced but could be equally vociferous. ...
... Understanding the ecology and geomorphology of the Connecticut River and its influence on Pre-contact subsistence strategies has been a central component in settlement pattern studies in Southern New England. However, smaller scale, more detailed studies of the landscape over time is needed to provide context for Connecticut's evolving archaeological settlement patterns and this has rarely been done, as it has in some river valleys in the American Midwest and Southeast (Butzer 1977, Butzer 1980Gardner and Donahue 1985;Waters 1992;Gaffney 1995;Stafford 1995;Goldberg and Macphail 2006). Perhaps, due to the logistical and financial issues of conducting surveys in a compact, densely populated, long-inhabited regions New ...
The primary objective of this research was to identify the alluvial geomorphic filters that obscure remnant settlement patterns and in so doing refine our understanding of Pre-contact settlement systems during the Archaic Period and Woodland Periods, a time of environmental change followed by settlement and subsistence shifts. Statistical analysis of Connecticut’s site distribution, historic planform analysis and partial reconstruction of the Glastonbury Reach during the Woodland Period revealed patterns in the Late Archaic through Woodland Periods (5000–300B.P.) floodplain site distributions. This research demonstrates that the development of a meandering alluvial reach coincided with a shift in settlement that began in the Late Archaic Period. Furthermore the Pre-contact planform reconstructions demonstrated that the Terminal Archaic through Middle Woodland archaeological site distributions were the most impacted by changes in the shape and location of the meanders. However, the last meander bend of the Glastonbury Reach was constrained in movement and therefore the archaeological site distribution within in it is a good representation of settlement patterns created from the Late Archaic through the Late Woodland Periods. Examination of this archaeological site distribution revealed a settlement preference for the ridge landforms created by the meandering river. This trend began in the Late Archaic Period and continued through Woodland Period, where it culminated in semi-sedentary villages, such as the Morgan Site, around 1000 A.D.
... Geographical Information Systems (GIS) came in use to relate different typologies of data and further analyse them in for example a predictive model (Barker, 1993, p.158). In the years following, GIS have revolutionized the way archaeologists conduct spatial analyses and caused a highly specialized field of archaeology that deals with the practical as well as theoretical implications of GIS (Allen, Green and Zubrow, 1990;Gaffney and van Leusen, 1995;Kvamme 1999;Lock 2001;Connoly and Lake, 2006;McCoy and Ladefoged, 2009;Llobera, 2012). However it is necessary to highlight that Geographic Information Systems function as data management platform and their use and development in archaeology strictly depends on the possibility of having access to new and different typologies of data. ...
Several digital technologies are now available to record and document archaeological excavations. A large number of studies have been published concerning the use of laser scanning, image based 3D modelling and GIS. By integrating different typologies of 3D data from Uppåkra, an Iron Age central place in southern Sweden, this thesis focuses on the development and evaluation of how 3D Geographic Information Systems (3D GIS) affect archaeological practice. In specific a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) was created for the site and the surrounding landscape. A UAV (drone) was used to document the excavation area in higher resolution, and image based 3D modelling was used to record the ongoing excavation on a single-context level. These different typologies of data were subsequently imported in a 3D GIS system (ArcScene) in order to conduct various types of spatial analysis (e.g. hillshade and slope analysis) as well as to create 3D drawings of the excavated contexts, using the textured 3D models as a geometrical reference. The ability to virtually revisit previous stages of the excavation and the use of tablet PC’s for documentation and discussion at the trowel’s edge increased reflexivity on the excavation and stimulated on-site interpretation by the excavation team. The model based drawing approach furthermore improved the drawing resolution compared to traditional documentation using a total station, especially for complicated contexts. This approach allowed connecting different typologies of data in the same virtual space, 1) increasing the possibility of researchers and scholars to gain a complete overview of all the information available, as well as 2) exponentially increasing the possibilities to perform new analysis. The ability to interact and navigate with all the data in 3D improved the impact of the data and comes closer to simulating the real world. Though some challenges still have to be faced, such as inaccurate georeferencing and unrealistic colour projection, the method was found to significantly improve the documentation quality by creating a multi-scale 3D documentation platform. By further developing this method, it can help us to improve the standards of archaeological excavation documentation.
... The idea is to examine the possible landscape factors involved in the decision to settle in a particular location, often with a view to developing a predictive model that allows the suggestion of other possible settlement locations. This, coupled with the ease of modelling physio-geographical factors (and the difficulty of incorporating social and cultural factors) in GIS models has led to a criticism of such models, and of predictive models based upon them as being overly environmentally deterministic (Gaffney and van Leusen 1995;Wheatley 1996;Verhagen et al. 1995;Wheatley and Gillings 2002: Ch. 8 and references therein; but see Verhagen and Whitley 2011 for counter-arguments). That is, they assume that people in the past behave as rational components in an ecosystem seeking to maximize economic/subsistence benefits while minimizing effort. ...
... As alluded to above, there has been a strong critique of the use of predictive models within archaeology. In the first instance concerns were raised as to their often environmentally deterministic basis (Gaffney and Van Leusen 1995;Kvamme 1997;Wheatley 1999Wheatley , 2004. This critique was rapidly accepted with scholars such as Verhagen et al. (2004), Van Hove (2004) and Peeters (2007) working hard to integrate a broader range of inputs (and often operating in a less deterministic manner overall). ...
Historic England commissioned a team from the University of Southampton to undertake project 6918, ‘Determining Potential: onshore/offshore prehistory’ between January 2014 and July 2015. The central focus of the research was on evaluating methods that might be used to help move from generic to more specific understandings of archaeological potential within such environs. A region of the Bristol Channel and Somerset Levels was chosen as the study area within which to carry out this work, due to its already noted high potential for contributing to our understanding of prehistory. Three overarching aims were given for the project:
a. Assess the efficacy of predictive modelling for the determination of the potential for submerged prehistoric archaeology in English waters;
b. Evaluate the range of methods open to archaeologists when assessing the potential for submerged prehistoric archaeology offshore, and how best to investigate/mitigate for it; and
c. Extend our knowledge of key inter-tidal and offshore sequences in a region already known for its nationally significant inter-tidal and onshore prehistoric record.
This monograph describes three different approaches to modelling potential: inductive, deductive and geoarchaeological. The conclusion is reached that inductive predictive modelling is currently an inappropriate method for improving our understanding of offshore potential (and in some instances deeply buried onshore locations) in England. This is due to low data density and high degrees of uncertainty with regard to prehistoric activity. Deductive and geoarchaeologically focused methods were found to hold much greater promise for determining potential. However, again the need for high quality input data was highlighted. All of the above approaches should be seen as iterative in nature, and require a commitment to improving data accessibility and joined up approaches to acquisition. It also requires a greater degree of communication with colleagues working in countries whose territorial waters directly abut England’s.
The above recognition of the need to improve our baseline understanding of both palaeoenvironmental change and archaeological finds density is one of the most significant and challenging outcomes from this project. In carrying out the review to address point b above, and the fieldwork to address point c, it became clear that we need to sample larger volumes across a wider range of ecological niches. Put simply, without adopting methods that maximise the chance of recovering material culture offshore we will never be able to:
1. Answer key research questions identified in regional and national research agendas that are pertinent to both the onshore and offshore archaeological record.
2. Improve our ability to pinpoint areas likely to produce important finds.
The lack of direct engagement offshore, the limited nature of inter-tidal investigations and the uneven distribution of commercial activity onshore has led to a record that is hard to interpret with regard to the specifics of potential, beyond discussion in the broadest terms.
Rather than being a negative outcome this is seen to be a positive result. The act of creating a deductive model forced detailed analysis of the qualities of input data, and highlighted lacunae in our understanding. In ground-truthing the deductive model new information was generated that contributes to our growing appreciation of the complexities of environmental change across the study region, and areas in need of future research clearly identified. Finally, through accepting that we may not be able to answer questions we have already raised of the offshore record without a change in approach, this research establishes the urgent need for more detailed consideration of how we manage and carry out research into the submerged prehistoric record, as well as compiling and distributing these results.
... The majority of these attempts have focused on deriving descriptive accounts of the way Aboriginal people utilised a region (eg Stockton 1993). However, actually mapping the pattern of land-use and activity has generally proved to be a much more difficult task (Gaffney & van Leusen 1995), especially when trying to untangle these patterns from issues of archaeological detectability and temporal preservation (Hall & Lomax 1996). For instance, it has tended to be done with landscape units applied over a region, to which qualitative statements about typical behaviour are assigned (eg Purcell 2002). ...
... Others see predictive modelling as it is currently practiced to be environmentally-deterministic, but this is a view that can rarely be substantiated (for a useful general critic see Coones 1992). Gaffney and van Leusen (1995) provide a useful summary of the debate over the use of environmental versus cultural factors and there is no doubt that certain environmental features and certain aspects of human behaviour do correlate well (Kohler 1988:19-25). ...
In the early 1980s a strategic approach to the description, assessment and management of cultural heritage places using biogeographical boundaries was developed in Queensland. A recent refinement correlates sites on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Indigenous Sites Database with environmental variables for the Moreton Basin Province of the Southeast Queensland Bioregion. Archaeological sites in the province are correlated with distance to water, elevation and particular geological and vegetation types. These correlations may reflect either real relationships or biases in the data. Preliminary correlative models developed are not considered substitutes for further inventory surveys and ongoing model refinement. The development of such models is considered useful in providing initial understanding of site distribution patterns.
... To reconstruct people's experience in the landscape requires a major interpretative operation. The first stage is to put the artefacts and structures in their full context (Gaffney and van Leusen 1995: 375, 378). This involves the integration of as much information as an interdisciplinary team can extract from the landscape, covering areas such as geomorphology, botany, historical documentation , ethnography, and remote sensing. ...
The first book to integrate fully the archaeological study of the landscape with the concerns of colonial and postcolonial history, theory and scholarship, The Archaeology of the Colonized focuses on the experience of the colonized in their landscape setting, looking at case studies from areas of the world not often considered in the postcolonial debate. It offers original, exciting approaches to the growing area of research in archaeology and colonialism. From the pyramids of Old Kingdom Egypt to illicit whisky distilling in nineteenth-century Scotland, and from the Roman roads of Turkey to the threshing floors of Cyprus under British colonial rule, the case studies assist Dr. Given as he uses the archaeological evidence to create a vivid picture of how the lives and identities of farmers, artisans and labourers were affected by colonial systems of oppressive taxation, bureaucracy, forced labour and ideological control. This will be valuable to students, scholars or professionals investigating the relationship between local community and central control in a wide range of historical and archaeological contexts.
... Others see predictive modelling as it is currently practiced to be environmentally-deterministic, but this is a view that can rarely be substantiated (for a useful general critic see Coones 1992). Gaffney and van Leusen (1995) provide a useful summary of the debate over the use of environmental versus cultural factors and there is no doubt that certain environmental features and certain aspects of human behaviour do correlate well (Kohler 1988:19-25). ...
In the early 1980s a strategic approach to the description, assessment and management of cultural heritage places using biogeographical boundaries was developed in Queensland. A recent refinement correlates sites on the Environmental Protection Agency's Indigenous Sites Database with environmental variables for the Moreton Basin Province of the Southeast Queensland Bioregion. Archaeological sites in the province are correlated with distance to water, elevation and particular geological and vegetation types. These correlations may reflect either real relationships or biases in the data. Preliminary correlative models developed are not considered substitutes for further inventory surveys and ongoing model refinement. The development of such models is considered useful in providing initial understanding of site distribution patterns.
... GIS analysis also allows the characteristics of monument locations to be compared easily with non-site locations, enabling some of the factors which influenced location choice (either directly, or indirectly) to be considered. GIS techniques have in the past been criticised for being environmentally deterministic (Gaffney and van Leusen 1995). This is only the case if the available technology is allowed to limit the archaeological interpretations. ...
The typology and chronology of the Neolithic monuments of the Carnac region of Brittany have been much debated. However, the landscape of which they are a part has been under-researched, in part due to the difficulty of conducting landscape research in the field. Through complimenting fieldwork with digital approaches, this paper demonstrates that the Neolithic monuments were deliberately situated in distinct landscape settings. By investigating the characteristics of the locations of the various types of monuments, new insight can be shed on the ways in which the monuments were experienced and perceived.
... The problem is that in a GIS it is the patterns that can be analysed, not the random occurrences. The GIS can identify the non-pattern parts, but not analyse them (Gaffney & Leusen, van 1995). Wise (2000) emphases the difference between ecological and phenomenological variables to be used in GIS. ...
Predictive modelling in GIS has been in practise in the USA for several decades. Lagging some years behind it has been tried in some European countries. This paper briefly outlines the concept of predicting modelling and describes an implementation of it made on the island of Gotland, Sweden. The method used is Logistic Regression Analysis and the object of the study is the Iron Age settlements, Kämpegravar. The independent variables used to predict the areas are soil types and land use and settlement patterns in the 18 th century, derived from old cadastral maps.
... The second new technique is termed viewshed analysis and has become one of the most common analytical uses of GIs in archaeological studies of landscape. Viewshed analysis has been used to address the social statements associated with assigned meanings of visible locations (Gaffney and van Leusen 1995;Lock and Harris 1996). It has also been used to examine the placement of barrows near stonehenge, where David Wheatley (1996) found that intervisibility was statistically significant, suggesting a conscious decision was made to place sites within the landscape in a manner that would make them visible from other, similar, sites. ...
AbstrAct Geographic Information systems (GIs) are still growing in relation to historical archaeology, and the related literature contains little on the actual methods for structuring such data. The author draws on fieldwork at four sites in the Otago region of New Zealand to present a sample data model as well as various uses for GIs in historical archaeology—from initial data collection to public presentation. Methodology developed here was used to map surface remains with GPs at four gold mining sites. because unforeseen problems can arise when transitioning field data into digital formats, the process developed as part of the author's work to translate, organize, and disseminate data is presented in clear steps. the benefits for public consumption of archaeological material is discussed as well as the potential for GIs to address simple phenemonelogical questions about past decisions in regards to site placement.
At the turn of the twenty-first century, project directors Tom Levy and Mohammad Najjar made the decision to move the Edom Lowlands Regional Archaeology Project (ELRAP) fully into the digital realm. Since then, the project has been on the forefront applying digital technologies to archaeological research. Levy’s advocacy for the use of interdisciplinary approaches in the field has resulted in many studies and publications pushing the boundaries of original research in the Southern Levant. Most notably, Levy’s “cyber-archaeology” has broken new ground in the integration of methods from diverse fields to bring new perspectives to the study of ancient society. This paper provides three new case studies based on original research in Faynan, Jordan, inspired by Levy’s significant contributions to cyber-archaeology: integrated use of 3-D modeling to record excavations, use of aerial photography and image-based modeling for site mapping, and the application of GIS for spatial analysis of archaeological landscapes.KeywordsGISPhotogrammetryCyber-archaeology3D
Predições são feitas cotidianamente, por todo mundo. Quantos pacotes de arroz é preciso comprar no supermercado? Qual é o melhor caminho para ir até o trabalho? A resposta que dermos a estas perguntas, geralmente inconsciente, se fundamenta nas informações
disponı́veis e na experiência passada: por exemplo, se consumimos dois quilos de arroz na semana anterior e se não há circunstâncias extraordinárias a vista, é bem possı́vel que essa seja a quantidade necessária para a próxima semana. Naturalmente, somos também capazes de inserir informações adicionais para adequar nossas decisões. Quando há notı́cias de um acidente no caminho que costumamos utilizar, procuramos estabelecer uma nova rota alternativa. Esse procedimento cognitivo é natural.
A modern approach towards the management of multiple kinds of data (e.g. archaeological, geological, topographic), regards the use of Geographical Information Systems, which provide a compositional and dynamic way of analysis and visualization. The current study concerns a pilot application of spatial statistics and the use of GIS at the distribution of a limited number of lithic findings from the Epipalaeolithic camp of Ouriakos in Lemnos. From a theoretical standpoint, this study tries to have a critical view in the use of computational approaches in archaeology and tackles some key concepts of spatial analysis such as the notion of palimpsest, scale, first and second order effects, ‘off-site archaeology’ etc. The methodological approach of the study was based in spatial statistics and point pattern analysis in order to explore the nature and degree of spatial patterns and relationships (e.g. spatial correlation). The analyses used were Ripley’s K function, Pair Correlation Function, Bivariate K function and Kernel Density Estimation, which were performed in the statistical package R. Main goal of the study is the investigation of methodology’s capabilities and restrictions and the exploration of special relationships and characteristics in space, which could potentially help us get a better understanding of its organization and the everyday activities which took place in Ouriakos (knapping spots, dumps, hearths etc.).
Access in: http://ikee.lib.auth.gr/record/327100/files/GRI-2021-29696.pdf
This research investigates the condition of unbuilt spaces in urban areas that reside in the interim between previous use and not-yet-decided new development. These unbuilt spaces are considered as valuable in the context of urban landscape. In order to acknowledge the character and quality of unbuilt spaces, design and planning procedures need to incorporate new interpretative techniques. The proposed NSA method integrates three research-by-design techniques that enable landscape researchers/designers to broaden the scope of disciplinary research practice. The conducted research is interdisciplinary and stands in the intersection of two research fields in the context of scale—urban planning and architectural design. The aim of this research is to propose the new methodological apparatus, which offers a holistic view on the notion of territory in regard to the notion of scale. The analysis takes the position that small-scale architectural design procedures and methods also apply to the scale of the landscape—territory. The proposed method—Narrative Spatial Analytics (NSA)—is based on simultaneous design procedures in opposing scales, assuming the overall significance of simultaneous understanding of the territory and the site.
Rimska mesta balkanskih in podonavskih provinc so bila doslej le redko del raziskav širših mestnih mrež. Namen prispevka je prepoznati glavne značilnosti mestnih sistemov in na podlagi najpomembnejših mest provincialne mestne hierarhije poiskati njihovo vpetost v ekonomijo provinc v času severske dinastije. Avtor se osredotoča na primerjavo velikosti prvorazrednih mest z ostalimi naselbinami, upošteva pa tudi njihovo lego in kmetijsko bogastvo zaledja. Ugotavlja, da moramo obravnavano območje glede na ekonomske vire razumeti kot obrobje rimskega imperija. Glavna bogastva obravnavanih provinc so bili namreč les, volna, ruda in delovna sila, kar se jasno izraža tudi v osnovnih geografskih parametrih prvorazrednih mest: v njihovi relativno skromni velikosti, obrobni legi in vojaški naravi.
Despite the long tradition of studies on early medieval churches, little is still known about the reasons behind the selection of specific places for building churches between the fifth to tenth centuries a.d. Thanks to some rich historical documents, the region of A Mariña (Galicia, north-west Iberia) represents an exceptional case study in order to analyse the spatial logic behind the creation of the early medieval ecclesiastical landscapes. This objective is pursued by means of the application of GIS and spatial statistics for the study of the locational patterns of these first Christian buildings. As this is a first attempt, we started from the formal analysis of topographic variables; then a settlement model for the churches was defined, and next used to analyse specific trends on their locational dynamics. The results allow us to propose that the location of the early medieval churches should be related to visual and territorial control over some specific areas of the landscape (mainly settlements and natural resources). This suggests that, despite the variety of church founders, some kind of collective planning of the church network did happen during the early Middle Ages. This fact can be historically explained as a key part of power strategies aimed at the creation of a new territorial articulation during this period.
This paper analyses rural settlement patterns in the Lower Rhine frontier zone to elucidate the role of forts in the rural economy. Von Thünen’s model of rural marketing suggests that market centres attract intensive cultivation, making them identifiable through spatial analysis of rural settlements. Environmental factors that influenced production capacity, however, can also be expected to exert a strong influence on settlement location, so a multivariate method of spatial analysis is necessary. Using a process of comparative modelling with logistic regression analysis, I test the hypotheses that rural settlements responded to the location of market centres, both civilian and military. I use univariate analysis of settlement territories to identify influential local environmental factors and combine these into a logistic regression model. Then I add a market potential (MP) variable that quantifies the accessibility of marketing opportunities from any location within a market system to see if this factor also shaped settlement patterns. Finally, I vary the centres included in the MP variable to determine whether rural settlements responded to the locations of forts in addition to civilian centres. I find that forts did not generally attract settlements and conclude that smallholders sold their produce primarily in civilian market places.
The purpose of this paper is to examine the contemporary needs for the sustainable management of the historic settlements of the Peloponnese, in Southern Greece, as well as the ways in which the capabilities and functions offered by geographical information systems (GIS) can be implemented for optimum results. This is achieved, firstly, by addressing some theoretical and methodological issues, concerning the management of historic settlements, based on their special characteristics and international conventions and, secondly, by examining the potential of GIS to tackle different management issues, like the preservation of their architectural identity, the management of different protection zones and the protection of the surrounding natural environment. In the last part, there will be a presentation of some preliminary results, regarding the practical application of GIS in the management of the historic settlement of Leontari, focusing on the protection of the monuments, its sustainable expansion and the preservation of its vernacular character.
El uso de las tecnologías digitales en las últimas dos décadas no solo ha transformado la manera de investigar el patrimonio arquitectónico, sino que también ha ampliado las posibilidades de generar proyectos cada vez más interdisciplinares. El aumento de la oferta de herramientas abiertas y con interfaces más funcionales y amigables ha permitido identificar y visualizar evidencias anteriormente imperceptibles, sintetizar y mapear informaciones temporales y combinar datos de documentaciones heterogéneas para generar nuevos datos e hipótesis. Asimismo, han proporcionado un escenario estimulante para elaborar preguntas sobre edificios, ciudades, territorios y los agentes que en ellos interactúan. El presente artículo trata de evidenciar el cambio en el proceso y en la práctica de la investigación en el campo de la historia de la arquitectura, con la utilización de las nuevas tecnologías digitales. Para ello, abordamos algunas cuestiones como el objetivismo/subjetivismo, la usabilidad de los datos, la flexibilidad del proyecto, la sostenibilidad de los datos y la formación y el aprendizaje de las tecnologías. Finalmente, tras la exposición de un ejemplo de la aplicación de las tecnologías digitales en la investigación de la historia de la arquitectura, presentaremos las estrategias, reflexiones y líneas futuras que hay que seguir. Estas apuntan hacia la idoneidad de las tecnologías como nuevas herramientas de investigación que abren otros posibles caminos de colaboración disciplinar, de avance en métodos de análisis, así como reflexiones futuras acerca la gestión de los datos creados.
Archaeology is fundamentally concerned with both space and time: dates, chronologies, stratigraphy, plans and maps are all routinely used by archaeologists in their work. To aid in their analysis of this material, the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) by archaeologists has become widespread. However, GIS are conventionally ignorant of time. Thus, if archaeologists are to achieve the fullest potential in the application of GIS to their studies, GIS are needed that properly take into account time as well as space.
A GIS capable of dealing with temporal data is referred to as a temporal-GIS (TGIS), and commercial TGIS systems currently exist. However, these are locked into a model of modern clock time. Archaeological time does not sit well within that model, being altogether fuzzier and less precise. Nor are commercial TGIS able to address the questions that archaeologists ask of their spatio-temporal data. Thus, a TGIS is needed that deals with the types of time that we encounter as archaeologists, lest we end up shaping our data and questions to the inherent capabilities of non-archaeological TGIS.
The creation of that new TGIS is the subject of this book: a fuzzy TGIS built specifically for the study of archaeological data that also takes into account recent developments in the theory of temporality within the discipline. The new TGIS needs to be flexible and powerful, yet to ensure that it is actually used it must remain within the software horizons of GIS-literate archaeologists.
The new TGIS has been applied to two case studies, one in prehistoric Derbyshire and one in Roman Northamptonshire, producing informative and interesting new results. It is hoped that others will fruitfully use the TGIS and that, as a result, new forms of spatio-temporal analysis might come to be applied to archaeological studies.
Archaeologists are often considered frontrunners in employing spatial approaches within the social sciences and humanities, including geospatial technologies such as geographic information systems (GIS) that are now routinely used in archaeology. Since the late 1980s, GIS has mainly been used to support data collection and management as well as spatial analysis and modeling. While fruitful, these efforts have arguably neglected the potential contribution of advanced visualization methods to the generation of broader archaeological knowledge. This paper reviews the use of GIS in archaeology from a geographic visualization (geovisual) perspective and examines how these methods can broaden the scope of archaeological research in an era of more user-friendly cyber-infrastructures. Like most computational databases, GIS do not easily support temporal data. This limitation is particularly problematic in archaeology because processes and events are best understood in space and time. To deal with such shortcomings in existing tools, archaeologists often end up having to reduce the diversity and complexity of archaeological phenomena. Recent developments in geographic visualization begin to address some of these issues, and are pertinent in the globalized world as archaeologists amass vast new bodies of geo-referenced information and work towards integrating them with traditional archaeological data. Greater effort in developing geovisualization and geovisual analytics appropriate for archaeological data can create opportunities to visualize, navigate and assess different sources of information within the larger archaeological community, thus enhancing possibilities for collaborative research and new forms of critical inquiry.
There has been a long-standing debate in academic archaeology on how to study the surface archaeological record. The debate has centered around whether to interpret the record as consisting of discrete sites and isolates or as continuous distributions of artifacts, features, and deposits. Historic preservation laws, however, focus on discrete sites as the properties that need to be discovered, recorded, and evaluated. As more research is done within a heritage management framework, the outcome has been to focus on the site as the unit of analysis almost to the exclusion of the study of spatial behaviors that transcend discrete sites. To achieve the objectives of heritage preservation and to examine spatial human behavior that is unconstrained by the site concept, new methodologies are needed. As a move in this direction we use GIS to create hypothetical archaeological landscapes based on assumptions of human behavior that can be tested and refined with survey and excavation data. In this process we collect detailed surface data that GIS algorithms use to define discrete sites and, at the same time, to analyze continuous distributions of cultural materials. We illustrate this approach with a several examples from North America and West Africa using different field methodologies.
This essay sets out to explore some of the debates concerning the interface between two landscape research disciplines; landscape archaeology and landscape ecology. The former is a long established field within archaeology whereas the latter is a relative newcomer that amalgamates spatial and temporal landscape interests. Landscape ecology has grown from inputs from a wide range of disciplines including ecology, geography and landscape architecture. Landscape archaeology, although more established, has had its ups and downs, reaching a high in the 1960s and 70s when rapidly developing technologies and numerical methods provided new tools in the form of pattern analysis techniques. However, the pursuit of pattern as an end in itself with little interpretation or links to social processes gave rise to criticism and internal conflicts. Pattern analysis was often associated with the extreme end of environmental determinism. During the last decade there has been a clear revival of interest in landscape studies in general that has resulted in major landscape research programmes often incorporating both archaeology and ecology. I believe that this popularity of landscape approaches owes much to two movements that are probably not independent. Firstly, the practical relevance of landscape issues to areal planning and, secondly, the advances in landscape perspectives including theoretical advances in landscape research.
Investigation of the archaeological record of hunters and gatherers has been frequently concerned
with the origins of social complexity. Yet, 'social complexity' is not a straightforward variable,
and the category 'complex hunter-gatherer' may create more problems than it solves. Rejection
of the category does not, however, eliminate nor account for real variation in the social
organisation and archaeological signatures of hunter-gatherers. Archaeological analyses of
hunter-gatherer economies have frequently considered time-budgeting constraints associated with
the production, storage, and redistribution of surpluses to be central. However, examination of
these time constraints show that they are not necessarily a constraint upon the development of
social complexity, but are an expression of the relationship between individual humans and their
environment. Spatial and temporal constraints are manifested through the individual's body, and
are expressed through technology, settlement pattern, and mobility practice. Some spatial
approaches in archaeology, such as locational analysis, have focused on the individual monad but
few have done so in a manner that adequately expresses the possibilities and constraints of the
individual and individual agency. Instead, most analyses have cast the individual as either a
simple optimising 'Homo economicus' making rational decisions within a neutral environment,
or as subject to a highly normative culture, or both. It is argued in this thesis that reconceptualising
the individual as living within a 'habitus' may be conducive to understanding
some aspects of the archaeological record. In particular, conceiving of the individual -
environment relationship as one of non-Cartesian mutualism leads to an appreciation of the
paired importance of the mobile individual in a built environment. From this perspective, a case
study from Vancouver Island on the Northwest Coast of North America is introduced. The pmedian
model in a Location-Allocation analysis is applied to a network formed by transportation
linkages between 238 habitation zones, created by clustering 576 archaeological sites. It is
shown that centrality of place within a network matters, as the more central places are also
larger sites, but this pattern only occurs at a spatial scale difficult to reconcile with deliberate
optimising behaviour. It is therefore concluded that this descriptive spatial geometry is
irreconcilable with any plausible underlying generative social geometry based on either
normative cultural rules or deliberate optimisation. Recognition that the built environment is an
interrupted process rather than a planned, finished product, allows one to avoid imposing the
'fallacy of the rule:' in this case ascribing to the inhabitants of the study area a totalised decisionset
for site location and intensity of use based on the location-allocation solution sets. Instead, it
is argued that the observed spatial patterning in the case study is better seen as the archaeological
signature of long-term, wide-scale, practical activity of individuals within a landscape of habit.
The result is the discovery of an important threshold in the spatial scale of the culturallyperceived
environment. Discussion follows of the implications of this thesis for the
interpretation of social complexity, for the predictive modelling of site location, for the
establishment of relevant spatial units of analysis, and for such familiar spatial ecological
variables as 'population density,' on the Northwest Coast and elsewhere.
An analysis of the spatial distribution of the rock art of Porto do Son (A Coruña) has been conducted
using both Geographic Information Systems –GRASS GIS– and statistical tools – R–. The
results point out that the petroglyphs in the study area show a heterogeneous distribution and a
nonuniform intensity. The exploratory analysis of the possible causes of such lack of homogeneity
has allowed us to define, through the use of an archaeological potential model, those external variables
that might have conditioned the spatial distribution of the analysed sample. Subsequently, we
have tried to establish –by using several tests based on the Monte Carlo methods– the existence of
eventual dependency relations between the points conforming the studied group.
The so called Early Celtic “Fürstensitze” undoubtedly reflect a change in settlement behaviour and in society. Our project investigates sites from the Urnfield to the Early Latène period in combination with their natural environment using GIS tools. The modelling of territories and of lines of communication is used to reconstruct the potential meaning of each «Fürstensitz» in its region, the analysis of visibilities can provide information on the prehistoric perception of space and the possible meaning of the “Fürstensitze” as places of power and control.
Rather than attempt to write a balanced or complete overview of the application of GIS to archaeology (which would inevitably end up being didactic and uncritical) this article sets out to present a discursive and contentious position with the deliberate aim of stimulating further debate about the future role of GIS within our discipline.
To this end, existing applications of GIS to archaeology are reviewed, concentrating on two areas of application, predictive modelling and visibility analyses, and on their wider disciplinary context. It is argued that GIS cannot be simplistically held to have been a 'good thing' or a 'bad thing' for archaeology, but rather that these different application areas may be analysed separately and found to have quite different qualities. Although they are in no sense alternatives to one another, the areas of predictive modelling and visibility analysis can be seen to represent quite different agendas for the development of an archaeology of space and/or place.
The development of correlative predictive models is considered first, both from the perspective of explanation and of cultural resource management. The arguments against predictive modelling as a means of explanation are rehearsed and it is found to be over-generalising, deterministic and de-humanised. As a consequence, it is argued that predictive modelling is now essentially detached from contemporary theoretical archaeological concerns. Moreover, it is argued to be an area with significant unresolved methodological problems and, far more seriously, that it presents very real dangers for the future representativity of archaeological records.
Second, the development of GIS-based visibility analysis is reviewed. This is also found to be methodologically problematic and incomplete. However, it is argued that visibility studies — in direct contrast to predictive modelling — have remained firmly situated within contemporary theoretical debates, notably about how human actors experience places (phenomenology) and perceive their surroundings (cognition). As such, it is argued that visibility analysis has the potential to continue to contribute positively to the wider development of archaeological thinking, notably through laying the foundations of a human-centred archaeology of space.
The paper concludes by qualifying the claim that there is a 'hidden agenda' for archaeological applications of GIS (Wheatley 1993), particularly by making it clear that this does not imply an attempt to distort the discipline. Instead, this is explained in terms of institutional and disciplinary inertia that should be addressed through greater debate and communication over these issues.
Landscape has always been an important aspect of archaeological research. Recently there has been emphasis placed not on the identification of specific sites and artefacts but on past attitudes towards social interaction within the landscape. This has stimulated debate on how people, both as individuals and collective societies, understand space and human action. Many of these studies integrate computer applications and quantitative methods with current theoretical agendas focusing on landscape and social practice. The combination of theory and practice is essential to archaeological enquiry, enabling hypotheses to stand upon firm data.
This article explores theoretical understandings of space and landscape and the practical application of these agendas in a study which focuses on the production and consumption of artefacts, specifically pottery, in Anglo-Scandinavian Lincolnshire. Many archaeological approaches to landscape studies involve the ways in which monuments and monumental landscapes structure and are structured by the societies which built them and inhabited them. Alternatively, this article focuses on how the social practices associated with the production and consumption of pottery participated in the social cognition of the landscape. It specifically concentrates on how travel practices can be associated with artefact distributions by measuring the distances in hours rather than kilometers, travelling beneath the crows rather than following their straight line of flight.
Much of the analysis and exploration of the data was done via a GIS (Geographical Information System). In order to simulate this interactive process, java applets were employed to allow the reader to investigate the patterns of data for themselves. This enables the author and reader to establish a discourse through the reader's participation in the cognitive processes involved in the analysis of data and the interpretation of maps and landscape.
The Neolithic monuments of the Carnac area of southern Brittany are of international importance. However, archaeologists have tended to study the monuments as individual sites, rather than investigating their landscape settings. This is in part because the landscape is difficult to explore in the field. Modern houses and conifer plantations obscure views; earthen structures have been significantly reduced in size, indeed some have been entirely levelled.
As it is difficult to conduct fieldwork in this landscape, digital techniques are particularly informative. The landscape is a subtle one, and environmentally deterministic interpretations are implausible. However, this does not mean that topography was unimportant to the choices of monument location. The visual characteristics of locales can vary greatly even in relatively slight topography. Small rises can obscure features near by, or give considerable prominence over longer distances.
This article explores the potential of visibility analysis and dynamic visualisation for investigating the visual context of two of the monument types, the earthen long mounds and angled passage graves. Traditional viewshed maps allow direct quantitative comparisons to be made between sites. The effect of monument dimensions is explored. However, as has been discussed in earlier articles in Internet Archaeology (e.g. Gillings and Goodrick 1996), viewshed analysis does not represent the whole of human visual experience. Therefore, visualisations have been used to explore the landscape further. A dynamic visualisation of a journey up the Crac'h estuary provides a more subjective view of the landscape settings of the monuments. The VRML version of the landscape model provides the opportunity for readers to explore the landscape themselves, and expand on the interpretations offered. However, the visualisations are limited in their resolution, and thus it is important to refer back to the viewshed maps for specific information. Through using complementary techniques, our understanding of the landscape is extended beyond that which is possible from a single approach.
Within the archaeological discipline, the agency debate has re-emphasised the importance of human volition within the archaeological landscape. Human action is influenced by how groups perceive their worlds and, more importantly, structured by the way in which they interpret affordances, created by the dynamic interplay between humans and their animate and inanimate surroundings. This conceptualises the notion of 'taskscape', in which different interpretations of space, time and accumulated experience generate a variety of potential pictures of past human lives. Human taskscapes are dynamic and built upon the historicity of human action, emphasising that spatial patterns of human practice are not static but contexts reflecting back on past and predicting future behaviour.
For archaeological analyses of the spatial structure of past human activities, the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has mostly been restricted to the recognition of spatial patterns in one-dimensional space and time. Static GIS therefore yields only an ahistorical picture of the past. Dynamic or temporal GIS includes the possibility of looking at dynamic taskscapes over time, enabling them to become both medium for and outcome of human action.
My current PhD research theorises the implications of the implementation of taskscapes for past human practice, through land use modelling within the southern Calabrian (Italy) Neolithic, using temporal GIS. This article will specifically discuss outcomes of dynamic simulation models and interpretations of results to emphasise an alternative approach to southern Italian Neolithic culture.
Whilst raised mires retain high potential for exceptional preservation of organic archaeological remains, locating such features is problematic. Within dryland landscapes, Geographical Information Systems (GIS) provide a range of tools that enable the predictive modelling of site locations on the basis of observed trends in the relationships between environmental conditions and human agency. However, the formation processes of raised mires mean that this is apparently not feasible due to considerable spatial and temporal complexity. This paper re-defines this position arguing that predictive modelling of archaeological site locations within raised mires is possible through four-dimensional landscape reconstruction and analysis, using multiple strands of archaeo-environmental data.
Archaeology has had a long and interesting relationship with technology. Technology has arguably allowed us to move from antiquarian interest to the robust academic institution that we now are. The importance that technology plays within archaeology is perhaps best exemplified within the increasingly popular/populist 'sub-discipline' of underwater archaeology. After all, contemporary underwater archaeology could not exist if it was not for the invention SCUBA. Alongside the 'day-to-day' use of technology there is also a rush to latch on contemporary technologies within the sub-discipline. The reasons for this are examined within this work, however, what is argued to be more important is the implications this has had on our discipline.This paper examines these implications on and as part of underwater archaeology. The impact of its use on interpretive thinking within the sub-discipline are analyzed by assessing the very nature of theoretical thinking within our work. This paper raises the difficult and perhaps controversial question — are underwater archaeologists merely substituting technology for theory and as such offering, admittedly impressive, complex and sound scientific computer models as interpretation, rather than the data that they really are?
The use of archaeological site distribution patterns in order to account for an archaeological landscape is a relatively new experiment in archaeology. Even though statistical theories and models in relation to site distribution patterns have evolved since the middle of the 80s, little attention has been paid to the potential for utilizing it as an explanatory method for the analysis of an archaeological landscape (Hodder, Orton 1976; Orton 1982).
This article presents a model for an archaeological landscape in relation to distribution patterns of archaeological sites through the use of spatial processes. Needless to say, a spatial process encompasses a wide range of various parameters and this article is conned to one of them, in other words, understanding distribution pattern through the use of nearest neighbor analysis.
Presented here are the results of a study to locate high-potential areas for archaeological sites in a largely surveyed area on the eastern shores of Lake Urmia northwestern Iran, including details of the analysis process. The project used environmental and archaeological data from over 118 known sites in the region and the results corresponded well with known sites in the study area. Generally, it is assumed that the selection of sites by the original inhabitants was at least partially based on a set of favorable environmental factors, such as distance to water or topographic setting. Another assumption is that modern day GIS layers consistently characterize changes from the prehistoric condition of the region sufciently well for them to be used to help discover additional sites.
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