Quantitative and Spatial Analysis (Other Keyword)
101-125 (187 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Research in Montezuma Canyon, San Juan County, Utah" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Photogrammetric imagery, spatial modeling, and resulting high-resolution orthomosaics can be used to identify potential excavation areas, previously unrecorded architecture and other archaeological features, and to verify and update existing mapdata and site information. This paper discusses the methods and results from...
Machine Learning R-CNN Identification of the Entirety of the Southwest Regional Road Network (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The United States Geologic Survey is intermittently releasing publicly available 1-meter resolution lidar of the contiguous United States through the 3-Dimensional Elevation Project. Over the past several years, large sections of lidar across southeast Utah, southwest Colorado, New Mexico, and small portions of Arizona have been released—creating an...
Making Quality Interpretations in the Ever-Expanding World of Digital Data (2018)
Digital data collection is often efficient, cost-effective, and a tremendous accompaniment to other archaeological collection methods like excavation. Furthermore, digital data can be used to generate measurements that are simply not possible with analog data. However, as computing technology continues to become faster, more powerful, and cheaper, and the ease of collecting massive amounts of data increases, it is fair to ask: Are our abilities to analyze and interpret these data keeping up?...
Managing the Effects of Climate Change and Foraging Risk through Dietary Portfolio Diversity, an Example from 13,000 years of Human-Environment Interactions on the Great Plains of North America (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Defining and Measuring Diversity in Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Food security and risk management are prominent contemporary global challenges, with ~795 million people undernourished worldwide. Climate change is projected to affect the availability, accessibility and stability of food sources, further exacerbating global malnutrition, but this is not a novel human challenge. Food security risk...
Mapping Seasonally Inundated Wetlands within the Ancient Maya Center of El Pilar (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient Maya center of El Pilar is a mid-sized settlement nestled on the ecotone dividing the central Peten and Belize river valley. With nearly half of the site consisting of seasonally inundated wetlands, defining the extent and nature of these areas is essential before interpreting El Pilar’s settlement patterns. Remotely sensed lidar and...
Mapping Teotihuacan’s Inception: Patlachique Phase Ceramics Distribution on the Lidar Map (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Patlachique Phase (100 BCE–ca.100 CE) is underrepresented in the archaeological record since most sites were probably covered by the Classic Period city of Teotihuacan (200–550 CE). This phase likely represents the beginning of the urbanization process in the Teotihuacan Valley, during a period of exponential growth seen in Central Mexico. We examined the...
Maya Monumental ‘Boom’: Spatial Development, Rank Ordering, and Planning Considerations at Alabama, East-Central Belize (2018)
In the 1980s, archaeological investigations by the Point Placencia Archaeological Project (PPAP) noted the rapid, single-phase development of monumental construction at the Maya site of Alabama in the Stann Creek District. Though never fully investigated by PPAP, this rapid, ‘boom-like’ development during the late facet of the Late Classic to Terminal Classic periods is being pursued in current investigations by the Stann Creek Regional Archaeology Project (SCRAP). This presentation, by...
Maya Ossuaries: Body Processing and Collective Memory in the Terminal Classic (2018)
The allocation of space for the deceased is an integral component of understanding the relationship between a community and its mortuary practices. This paper explores how Maya ossuaries, or deposits with the commingled remains of multiple individuals, form a distinct body processing method that increases in frequency during the Terminal and Postclassic period in the Northern Maya lowlands. Data from salvage excavations of a Terminal Classic disturbed ossuary in the archaeological zone of...
Measures of Influence: Volumetric Assessment of Earthworks at Angel Mounds Using Drone-Based Lidar (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Angel Mounds State Historic Site, a Middle Mississippian fortified mound center along the Ohio River, is home to 11 man-made earthworks which make up the largest known archaeological site in Indiana. Angel’s occupation coincides with the regional changes in social organization that characterize Mississippian society. Many archaeologists have discussed mound...
A Methodology for Comparing and Evaluating Seriation Algorithms Applied to Archaeological Data (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. According to recent literature, correspondence analysis is the method of choice for frequency seriation. However, this does not consider the effects of data heterogeneity or typology on the orderings produced by this method. This relates to a more fundamental issue of how to evaluate the effects of heterogeneity and typology on seriation results, as well as...
Micro-habitat Production in the Late Woodland Period (2018)
This paper presents the results of recent statistical analyses focused on relative plant species distributions among six Princess Point sites in Late Woodland Southern Ontario and explores potential markers of micro-habitat production in the region.
Modeling the Dynamics of Diversification (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Practical Approaches to Identifying Evolutionary Processes in the Archaeological Record" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Quantifying diversity is one of the most fundamental components of both a scientific and evolutionary approach to archaeology. While archaeologists have spent decades painstakingly describing diversity, we continue to lack a comprehensive understanding on broader evolutionary patterns of...
Modeling the Milpa-Cycle: A GIS-Based Approach to Envisioning Ancient Maya Land Use and Traditional Agricultural Practices (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Provisioning Ancient Maya Cities: Modeling Food Production and Land Use in Tropical Urban Environments" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Traditional ecological knowledge from living Maya farmers informs us of a storied heritage of agricultural production within the tropical Maya lowlands that traces its lineage to the development and height of ancient Maya civilization. In studying the Maya milpa-cycle, a 20-year...
Moving in New Ways, Making New Places: Novelty and the Politics of Place Making (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Seeing Migrant and Diaspora Communities Archaeologically: Beyond the Cultural Fixity/Fluidity Binary" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Tracing the movement of people archaeologically is a challenge, especially since the deconstruction of the direct association between people groups and material culture. This paper approaches material culture and spatial practice as the constitution and negotiation of social relations. I...
A Multi-temporal Analysis of Archaeological Site Destruction Using Landsat Satellite Data and Machine Learning, Moche Valley, Peru (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The destruction of archaeological sites and the loss of archaeological landscapes remains a global concern as populations and urban areas continue to expand. Archaeological sites are not only significant to local communities, national identities, and modern tourist economies but also provide critical knowledge of past sociocultural interactions, settlement...
A New Methodology for Understanding How Bone Wears Using 3D Surface Texture Analysis (2018)
Use-wear analysis provides a tool for studying traces produced on animal bone during manufacture and use. Often, these analyses have been qualitative, describing the surface two-dimensionally, and have led to inconsistencies between researchers. Studies have focused on interpreting final traces and lack a foundation in understanding how the traces developed. Here, we propose a new methodology for studying bone surface traces that will reduce the problems of unreliable and unreplicable results in...
A New Tool for Forensic Geoarchaeology: Sediment Fingerprinting with Geochemistry for Homicide Investigations (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Forensic Archaeology: Research & Practice" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Sediment fingerprinting by elemental analysis has been an important analytical tool in the environmental sciences to help explain sediment movement and deposition in water bodies and other catchments. Related techniques have also been used in many archaeological investigations to aid in ancient activity area analysis. However, this technique has...
Of Palisades and Postmolds (2018)
The fieldwork conducted in Tyler Bastian’s 1969-1970 salvage trench at Biggs Ford revealed a unique window into two Late Woodland villages, a Montgomery Complex and a Keyser Complex. The post mold patterns observed in the initial analysis of the trench may indicate the footprints of both complexes. Linear post mold arcs and a ring of pits may be consistent with other known Montgomery Complex sites, namely the Winslow site in Montgomery County. Additionally, post mold patterns in the extreme...
One Thing Leads to Another: Causal Triggering among Archaeological Events (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Practical Approaches to Identifying Evolutionary Processes in the Archaeological Record" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A causal connection between archaeological events is frequently little more than a convenient assumption. The repeated occupation of a site, the occurrence in time and space of a ceramic ware, or the phases of settlement construction are all assumed to reflect some causal sequence, but it is far from...
Overlapping Traces: Categorizing Ceramic Use-Wear across Functions (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Practitioners of ceramic use-wear analysis often document qualitative patterns to distinguish between past behaviors as well as taphonomic processes. If comparisons can be operationalized in a quantitative framework, analyzing assemblages across sites at a regional scale could inform our understanding of normative patterns of use as well as the diversity of...
Paleoethnobotanical Analysis at Huaca del Loro: Initial Findings and Interpretations (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Almost 100 Years since Julio C. Tello: Research at Huaca del Loro, Nasca, Peru" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeobotanical data have the ability to speak to myriad issues of human-environment interactions as well as social institutions within societies. Here, I present the initial findings from my analysis of paleoethnobotanical remains at the site of Huaca del Loro, a Wari-affiliated site located in the Nazca...
Paleoindian and Early Archaic Southeast: Twenty Years of Georgia Archaeology (2018)
In the twenty years since the O’Steen and Ledbetter et. al chapters in The Paleoindian and Early Archaic Southeast, a great deal of work on the earliest occupations of Georgia has occurred. In this paper, we review recent fieldwork and collections research that have contributed to our understanding of Georgia’s early record, update distributional data of Paleoindian and Early Archaic diagnostics across the state, and compare this diagnostic distributional data with raw material distributions...
Paleolithic Occupations at Riparo Bombrini (Liguria, Italy): Understanding the Spatial Organization of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Hunter-Gatherer Archaeology of Liguria: Recent Research and Insights" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The site of Riparo Bombrini (Liguria, Italy) offers a unique setting to compare the spatial organization of Neanderthal and Homo sapiens occupations in a single archaeological site. The disappearance of Neanderthals is one of the greatest debates in prehistory since the period of their decline corresponds to the...
The Pennsylvania Precontact Predictive Model (2018)
In 2015, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration sponsored the development of a predictive model for prehistoric site locations in Pennsylvania. Since the development and release of the model, numerous surveys have been performed across the state, and many new prehistoric archaeological sites have been identified and mapped. During the 2016 and 2017 summers, undergraduate and graduate archaeology students participating the Pennsylvania Department of...
Photogrammetry, Excavation Surfaces, and Sediment Packages: Measuring Site Occupational Intensity at Crvena Stijena, Montenegro (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Late Middle Paleolithic in the Western Balkans: Results from Recent Excavations at Crvena Stijena, Montenegro" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In order to understand changes in the way hominins have used a site through time, it is critical to understand temporal changes in artifact density (i.e., a quantitative measure of the number of artifacts relative to the amount of supporting sediment in a given stratigraphic...