Digital Archaeology: Simulation and Modeling (Other Keyword)

126-144 (144 Records)

Tools for Quantitative Archaeology: Spreading Numeracy to a Generation of Southwestern Archaeologists (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Wesley Bernardini.

This is an abstract from the "Attention to Detail: A Pragmatic Career of Research, Mentoring, and Service, Papers in Honor of Keith Kintigh" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. More than any other scholar in the American Southwest, Keith Kintigh is responsible for spreading numeracy – the ability to understand and work with numbers – to the current generation of Southwestern archaeologists. His Tools for Quantitative Archaeology (TFQA) software...


Toward an Epidemiological Model of Sarcoptic Mange among Andean Camelids (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Morucci.

This is an abstract from the "Current Zooarchaeology: New and Ongoing Approaches" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Sarcoptic mange is a highly infectious, zoonotic disease endemic to modern Andean camelid populations. Severe infection can result in the loss of wool and death of the animal. Rapid spread can lead to significant economic losses and population instability. Despite widespread awareness and preventative measures taken by modern camelid...


Towards a Wave-of-Advance Model for Predicting the Spread of Prismatic Blade Technology in Mesoamerica (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Mark. Justin Holcomb. David Carballo.

The diffusion and spread of material culture is a cornerstone of archaeological research, particularly understanding the variables which dictate the structure of dispersal. Recent evolutionary approaches have sought to address technological spread through mathematical modeling. One model, the reaction-diffusion model, suggests diffusion occurs at the population scale as a wave-of-dispersal. While previous researchers demonstrated the efficacy of this approach regarding the peopling of a...


Traversing the Great Forest: Work and Mobility in Sweden’s Premodern Farmscape (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only T. L. Thurston.

This is an abstract from the "The State of the Art in Medieval European Archaeology: New Discoveries, Future Directions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Most of pre-modem Sweden comprised wooded uplands lying outside more densely populated 'civilized' regions. Often collectively called The Great Forest, this territory stretched from south-central to the high north, where Scandinavian, Finnish, and Sami people often lived in close proximity....


Updated Perspectives on Sennacherib’s Siege at Tel Lachish (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Jon Carroll.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From gypsum reliefs that once decorated the walls of the Assyrian capital at Nineveh, archaeologists know that Sennacherib’s army laid waste to the city of Lachish, Judah (now Israel) in 701 BC. There remains no consensus on how these events unfolded, but many researchers agree that the Lachish reliefs were intended to serve as both historical record and...


An Updated Radiocarbon Chronology of the Middle to Late Woodland Transition in Southern Ontario: Regional Variation in the Dynamics of Cultural Change (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only James Conolly. Daniel Smith.

This is an abstract from the "Dating Iroquoia: Advancing Radiocarbon Chronologies in Northeastern North America" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Middle to Late Woodland transition in southern Ontario extends over approximately 500 years and encompasses several changes in subsistence and settlement patterns, ritual practices, and ceramic and lithic crafting traditions. The last major review of the radiocarbon chronology related to these changes...


Using Food Web Models to Examine Desert Networks in the American Southwest and Western Australia (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Stefani Crabtree.

Archaeological studies benefit from rich ecological data, yet linking ecological data to narratives of the past can be difficult. Here I use trophic network modeling to understand both Ancestral Pueblo and Australian Aboriginal food webs, comparing these systems for a greater understanding of human and environmental resilience. Here I show that Ancestral Pueblo people connected themselves into a greater environmental web and use network analysis to examine how the changing network properties of...


Using Predictive Modeling to Evaluate Changes in Great Basin Paleoindian Settlement Systems through Time (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Erica Bradley. Geoffrey Smith. Kenneth Nussear.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Great Basin underwent considerable environmental change during the Pleistocene–Holocene transition, such as lower precipitation, increased temperatures, and the diminishment of lakes and wetlands. Archaeologists have long hypothesized that people responded by altering their settlement-subsistence strategies. Some models outlining these responses...


Using Quantitative Methods to Assess Network Change in Coupled Human/Natural Systems (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Stefani Crabtree.

This is an abstract from the "Novel Statistical Techniques in Archaeology I (QUANTARCH I)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Our understanding of the dynamics and stability of human systems cannot be uncoupled from their environmental and ecological contexts. Archaeological knowledge can deeply inform, enhance and transform our understanding of socio-ecological dynamics and sustainability, if we can only quantitatively assess these interactions. One...


The Variable Resilience of Large and Small Holdings on the Svalbard Estate, NE Iceland: A Multidisciplinary Study of Farm Abandonments Circa AD 1300 (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only James Woollett. Céline Dupont-Hébert. Paul Adderley. Guðrun Alda Gísladóttir. Natasha Roy.

Recent studies have identified an important reorganization of the Svalbarð estate, north-east Iceland around AD 1300. The initial coastal-focused settlement of the region was followed by the founding of new farms in the deep interior. Most were not sustained and some farm sites on the coast were also reduced. Initially, the magnate’s farm of Svalbarð had a herding economy supplemented by fishing while Hjálmarsvík, its coastal neighbor, exploited a diversity of marine resources. Around AD 1300...


A View from the Mountains: A Test of a Predictive Model in the Southern Wind River Range, Wyoming (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Connor Johnen.

This paper details the results of archaeological survey in the Wind River Range, Wyoming between elevations of 9,000 and 11,000 ft. The purpose of this survey was to test a predictive model of a specific site type (sites referred to as villages) created by Stirn (2014) and tested by Stirn in a different region of the same mountain range. Although the methods of creating the predictive model were not altered, the survey methods were significantly altered. Random survey blocks were created within...


Virtual Reality and Archaeological Practice (2023)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Emily Blackwood.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Virtual reality (VR) is a tool that offers an opportunity to approach archaeological analyses and communications through a different lens. VR provides a platform where data can be continuously updated and modified as is becomes available as well as adding an element of interactivity. VR allows the user to engage with a simulated environment, walk around,...


Visualizing the Unique: Lidar and Three-Dimensional Modeling as a Preservation Tool for NHPA Compliance (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Cameron Townsend.

This is an abstract from the "Archaeologies of the Eastern Jemez Mountain Range and the Pajarito Plateau: Interagency Collaboration for Management of Cultural Landscapes" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act requires federal agencies to consider the effects of actions carried out on historic properties under their jurisdiction. In the instance of an undertaking that would diminish or remove important...


What Are the Chances? Estimating the Probability of Coincidental Artifact Association with Megafauna Remains (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Madeline Mackie.

There has long been a debate about the frequency of megafauna hunting or dismemberment by early Paleoindians in North America. Proposed megafauna kill sites are heavily scrutinized. Sites which contain limited artifacts, but no projectile points are often discounted or classified as ‘possible’ kill sites due to their limited cultural materials. This begs the question, just how likely (or unlikely) are artifacts to be accidentally associated with megafauna remains? Using a computer model, the...


What Makes a Forager Turn Coastal? An Agent-Based Approach to Coastal Foraging on the Dynamic South African Paleoscape (2019)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Colin Wren. Curtis Marean. Eric Shook. Kim Hill. Marco Janssen.

This is an abstract from the "Human Behavioral Ecology at the Coastal Margins: Global Perspectives on Coastal & Maritime Adaptations" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Gram for gram, coastal shellfish have significant benefits over many terrestrial resources. They are higher in calories, fats, and proteins than most plants and are available in denser and more predictable patches than mammals. However, there are costs to foraging coastal shellfish....


Which Way Did They Go? Using Individual-Based Models to Identify Out of Africa Hominin Dispersal Routes (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Christopher Lanza. Amanuel Beyin. Erik R. Otárola-Castillo.

There is a broad paleoanthropological consensus that hominins left Africa multiple times during the Pleistocene, but the geographic routes through which they exited the continent remains unclear. Although the Sinai Land Bridge and the Strait of Bab-al-Mandab on the southern end of the Red Sea are commonly implicated as the likely pathways used by early humans during their expansion out of Africa, the evidence supporting each route is still much debated. Here, we identify viable pathways for...


Winter Is Coming: Is ‘Fortification’ Always Fortification? (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only Igor Chechushkov.

The case study comes from the southern Urals, Russia. Since 1970’s the walled settlements of the Sintashta archaeological culture (2000-1700 BC) have been interpreted as the fortified towns and centers of social life for the religious and war leaders of the local communities. However, settlements’ primary locations on the bottoms of the rivers’ valleys, as well as lack of other evidence for the warfare, cause doubts about such interpretation. Analysis of natural environments (e.g., local wind,...


You're Going to Carry that Weight a Long Time (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only C. Michael Barton. Julien Riel-Salvatore.

Mobility is a phenomenon of importance across all past and present societies. For hunter-gatherers, mobility structures ecological strategies, social organization, and response to environmental change. For prehistoric societies, we cannot observe mobility but it is possible to study it through a proxy record of discarded material items and biological remains that form the archaeological record. Increasingly archaeological practice has shifted from proposing intuitive links between mobility and...


ZooaRchGUI: A User-Friendly Graphical User Interface with the R-Programming Language for Archaeologists (2018)
DOCUMENT Citation Only John Rapes. Jesse Wolfhagen. Max Price. Erik R. Otárola-Castillo.

Zooarchaeologists contribute valuable data to the exploration of archaeology’s grand challenges. The scale and complexity of these problems requires zooarchaeologists to aggregate and analyze data using rigorous statistical methods while ensuring reproducibility and validity. Because assemblages can contain thousands of data points, conducting statistical analyses on all of the available data in a standardized fashion is difficult. ZooaRchGUI provides zooarchaeologists a free, user-friendly...