Human Origins (Other Keyword)
1-3 (3 Records)
Multispectral imagery is a powerful tool for various disciplines that use landscape scale spatial patterning to understand and identify underlying geochemical variations. Paleontologists have used multispectral imagery in numerous locations; however, it has not been extensively applied in the study of archaeological sites associated with human fossil localities in East Africa. Extensive geological exposures combined with laterally expansive volcanic ashes in the Turkana basin make this an ideal...
A Bayesian Solution to the Controversy over the Identification of Bone Surface Modification in Paleoanthropology (2017)
Bone surface modification (BSM) remains a primary source of taphonomic inference in paleontological and archaeological contexts. However long-standing debates in BSM studies have undermined the utility of this approach. We use an objective machine-based learning algorithm rooted in Bayesian probability theory designed to quantify the level of uncertainty associated with a formal assignment of agent to individual BSM. Our multivariate Bayesian model, trained on large assemblages of...
Operationalizing Semiotic Theory as an Archaeological Research Method: A Levantine Case Study (2015)
Archaeology has long flirted with Peircean semiotics as an heuristic for interpreting prehistoric behaviors and the cognitive processes that support them. Yet beyond the widespread adoption of Peircean terminology (icon, index, symbol), the discipline has been unable to operationalize the approach as a viable research method. This paper introduces Peircean Semiotics as a means of re-classifying non-utilitarian artifacts in terms of their target audiences and concomitant social consequences....