Digital Archaeology: GIS (Other Keyword)
1-25 (521 Records)
This is an abstract from the "Community Matters: Enhancing Student Learning Opportunities through the Development of Community Partnerships" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Nuri, a UNESCO World Heritage site, in northern Sudan is the primary burial site for the Nubian Pharaohs beginning with Taharqa of the 25th Dynasty. Thoroughly looted in antiquity, the site was excavated by George Reisner, Director of the Harvard University-Boston Museum of Fine...
The 2022 Petén Lakes Lidar/GPS Georectification Project (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Research in the Petén Lakes Region, Petén, Guatemala" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Remotely sensed lidar data has proven to be a boon for Maya archaeology, from its beginnings at Caracol in Belize, Copan in Honduras, to consortiums of various archaeological projects like Salinas de los Nueve Cerros, La Corona, Holmul, and elsewhere. In a relatively simple regiment of sensing, detailed cartographic maps can be...
Adaptive Approaches to the Thingness of Institutional Datasets: A View from North Carolina (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The North Carolina Office of State Archaeology has been building a database of standardized information about archaeological sites since 1977. Like most datasets that bridge the analog to digital transition, the North Carolina site file has experienced several distinctive phases of accretional development. Designed for the purposes of predictive modeling, the...
The Adaptive Capacity of the Water Management System of Angkor, Cambodia (2018)
This paper assesses the relationship between elements of adaptive capacity of a water management system among six time periods. The archaeological case study, Angkor, Cambodia, was the center of the Khmer Empire for over 600 years (9th-15th centuries CE). During this time, the Khmers developed one of the largest and most complex water management systems in the pre-industrial world. In this paper, I use geographic information system analyses to quantitatively and qualitatively assess six elements...
Addressing Taphonomic Complications in the Use of Archaeological Radiocarbon Assemblages as Population Proxies: A Case Study in the Bonneville Basin (2021)
This is an abstract from the "People, Climate, and Proxies in Holocene Western North America" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of the imperatives driving reconstructions of past demography is the desire to analyze the impacts of past climate changes on human populations. An increasingly popular tool is the analysis of archaeological radiocarbon record, but the very paleoclimate changes that are of interest also have geomorphic effects—and the...
Agency and Pilgrimage in a Living Landscape: Contemporary Lacandon Maya Visits to Ancient Ruins (2023)
This is an abstract from the "The Vibrancy of Ruins: Ruination Studies in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this presentation, we analyze Lacandon Maya communication with nonhuman forces through pilgrimages to ritual landscapes, particularly ancient Maya ruins in the lowlands of Chiapas, Mexico, and Petén, Guatemala. Through archaeological and ethnographic evidence we examine these spaces where Lacandon Maya have undertaken...
The Agency of Flowing Water in Human Mobility and Interaction (2018)
Water is one of the most powerful agents of change on the planet. Flowing water can build and destroy landscapes rapidly in dramatic fashion as with flash flooding or gradually through incremental natural processes, shaping the terrain through sedimentation, erosion, and seasonal fluctuations in water flow. Within human societies, these waterways may be perceived as a source of danger, but also provide subsistence and non-subsistence resources, and serve as landscape features that alter how...
Agricultural Strategies and Intensification: A Study of Risk Management in the Southern Maya Lowlands (2018)
The decisions and consequences behind the intensification of agricultural strategies among past societies has long been a topic of debate among archaeologists. These discussions are often dominated by factors of population dynamics and production capacity. This paper will explore the less discussed factor of risk management. Controlling the variation of production in regard to fluctuating natural and social pressures was critical to past agrarian societies and undoubtedly played a role in the...
All along the Watch Tower: Surveillance, Survivance, and the Making of a Christianized Landscape in the Mangareva Islands, French Polynesia (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Social Archaeologies and Islands" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The transformation of island environments and settlement patterns resulting from missionisation and Christian conversion is a well-developed theme in the historical archaeology of Oceania. The Mangareva Islands in French Polynesia provide an exemplary case study, featuring dozens of stone structures built by the Catholic Pères des Sacrés Cœurs beginning...
All for Drone and Drone for Free: A Free and/or Open-Source Workflow for UAV Imagery Collection and Analysis (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Novel Statistical Techniques in Archaeology II (QUANTARCH II)" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Full coverage pedestrian survey to record new sites on unknown archaeological landscapes is costly in terms of money, time, and personnel. Archaeological projects are usually limited in these resources and have to simultaneously balance data quantity with quality within their budgetary means. Researchers have experimented...
An Alternative Pattern of Coalescence: A Study of Architecture and Organization at a Non-fortified, Pre-Inca Town in the Southern Highlands of Peru (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Beyond the Round House: Spatial Logic and Settlement Organization across the Late Andean Highlands" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper presents a detailed analysis of architecture and spatial organization at Maukallaqta de Nuñoa, a pre-Inca site in the highlands of southern Peru. Maukallaqta was constructed at a time when societies across much of the central Andean highlands were constrained by persistent...
Amazonian Wetland Domestication: a spatial analysis of Pre-Columbian zigzag features in Lowland Bolivia (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent archaeological studies show that pre-Columbian communities began modifying Southwestern Amazonia approximately 3,500 years ago. Previous research within lowland Bolivia has primarily focused on the fields and forest islands that populations built to elevate themselves and their crops from seasonal flooding. However, a series of zigzag earthworks...
Analysis and Implications of Post-Depositional Bias in the Basin of Mexico (BOM) Surveys: A Preliminary Case Study of the Texcoco Survey Region (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Basin of Mexico (BOM) regional surveys have been a cornerstone of archaeological inferences about Prehispanic demography, political and economic organization over the long-term. However, recent geoarchaeological fieldwork in the BOM has indicated patterned geomorphological biases in the regional surveys, notably the repeated phases of Holocene alluvial...
Analysis of Pastoralist Settlement Patterns in Eastern Djibouti (ca. 1200–500 BP) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. River drainages have long been loci of seasonal migration and settlement for pastoralist societies in the Horn of Africa. Dotted with pastoralist camp sites, eastern Djibouti’s Amboule River drainage is an ideal location to study long-term pastoralist settlement dynamics at a sub-regional scale. In 2017 and 2018, as part of a systematic survey of pastoralist...
Analysis of Settlement Patterns in Albania from the Iron Age through Greek and Roman Colonization and Integration (1100 BCE–395 CE) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Illyrians were an Indo-European group of people who inhabited a large expanse of the Balkans. As interactions with the Greeks and, later, the Romans increased, the sociopolitical organization of the Illyrians was undoubtedly affected. In this presentation, I present the results of my thesis research, the goal of which is to better understand how Greek...
Analysis of Settlement Patterns Near the Big Burro Mountains (2018)
This poster presents the results of an archaeological survey of Pitchfork Ranch, located near the Big Burro Mountains in southeastern New Mexico. The survey was conducted by staff and students of the Archaeology Southwest Upper Gila Preservation Archaeology (UGPA) field school from 2015 to 2017. There is evidence on the ranch of human activity ranging from possible Paleolithic and early Archaic sites up to 20th century sites. Using GIS and geospatial data collected during this survey it is...
Analyzing Urban and Industrial Threats to Heritage in Turkey Using Remote Sensing and GIS (2018)
In Akçalar, Turkey, the location of the Neolithic-Chalcolithic Aktopraklık site, urban and industrial development present shocking social, cultural, and economic changes to the community. The local landscape is transforming as towering apartment complexes are quickly expanding into areas previously occupied by sprawling fields of crops. As documented ethnographically, these processes have heightened local awareness of the decline of community heritage values, like neighborliness, agricultural...
Ancestral Pathways of Fiji: Using GIS to Analyze Landscapes of Movement and Lineages within the Sigatoka River Valley (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Geospatial Studies in the Archaeology of Oceania" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The concept of landscapes of movement establishes the theoretical basis for understanding meaning behind the creation and use of roads, trails, and pathways. This meaning can be categorized by "prioritized relationships" (i.e., social, political, religious, economic) which ultimately stimulate the existence of landscapes of movement. This...
Ancient Landscapes of Amazonia: A Study of Pre-Colonial Processes and Contemporary Use at Macurany, Brazil (2018)
We analyze settlement organization and landscape modification at Macurany, a pre-Colonial terra preta site on the Middle Amazon River in Parintins, Brazil, within local and regional contexts. Pre-colonial land modifications dot the contemporary landscapes of Amazonia. Many such landscape features, such as anthrosols, elevated platforms, mounds, ramps, and riverine ports, are used today by contemporary inhabitants of Amazonia. New data gathered at Macurany reveals that ancient Amerindians altered...
Ancient Maya Mobility: Hinterlands Sacbe Systems (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part I" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper will discuss investigations of two sacbeob in the hinterlands in northwestern Belize. These features connect ancient Maya household groups, aguadas, quarries, terraces and ritual features. The study of ancient causeway systems is crucial to the understanding of mobility, sociopolitical, and economic networks in the...
Ancient Population History in the Palenque Region: The Problem of the Selection of Population Proxies (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Mesoamerican Population History: Demography, Social Complexity, and Change" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Proyecto Regional Palenque (PREP) has recorded a total of 653 sites within an area of 650 km2. Regional population ranges from 28,000 to 32,000 inhabitants. Mapping efforts and household excavations undertaken as part of the Proyecto Especial Palenque during the seasons of 1992–1994 identified 1,480...
Angkorian Settlements and Interactions in the Cambodia Middle Mekong Region (2018)
The Middle Mekong Region played a crucial role in the formation of the pre-Angkorian and Angkor states. Most Angkorian centers are concentrated within the open plains with favorable access to rice cultivation and interconnected by landroutes. Settlements of the Middle Mekong Region are predominantly located within a narrow strip of fertile land between the rivers and the highlands historically associated with different groups of minorities. This paper combines multiple datasets including site...
Análisis geoespacial de la distribución de sitios arqueológicos en la Sub-Región Diquís, Región Gran Chiriquí (2018)
La Sub-región Diquís de la Región Gran Chiriquí posee a la fecha un total de 1.595 registros de sitios arqueológicos documentados en la Base de Datos Orígenes del Museo Nacional de Costa Rica. El presente trabajo expone los resultados logrados al aplicar un análisis geoespacial diseñado para conocer la distribución de dichos depósitos arqueológicos, en un contexto fisiográfico modelado para tal efecto mediante sistemas de información geográfica (SIG), que permite aproximarse a las...
Applications of Geospatial Technologies in Known Archaeological Landscapes: Re-examining the Archaeological Settlement Pattern of Falefa Valley (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Geospatial Studies in the Archaeology of Oceania" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The development and present nature of landscape archaeology in the Pacific owes much to the pioneering work of Janet Davidson and Roger Green in Falefa Valley, Upolu, Sāmoa. This research, completed in the absence of modern geospatial technology, not only demonstrated the potential of landscape-scale investigations in Polynesia but also...
Applying Circuit Theory to Colonial Expansion Modeling in the Great Bay Estuary, New England. (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the early 1600s, the Great Bay Estuary was a frontier colonial settlement that rapidly became an economic hub for the extraction and export of natural resources into the West Indies trade network. Being directly accessible from the Atlantic coast of modern-day New Hampshire, the Great Bay Estuary provided a logical point of entry for water vessels and...