Digital Archaeology: GIS (Other Keyword)

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephanie Martin.

The Least Cost Path analysis in ArcGIS has been a critical tool in archaeological reconstructions of movement and connectivity, but until recently these analyses have been limited to land travel. From the Neolithic onwards, sea travel was an equally important mode of transportation in the Aegean and wider Mediterranean. In this study, I utilized the Least Cost Path tool in ArcGIS to model sea travel in the Aegean. Bathymetric data and speed and direction of local wind and currents were inputs in...

DOCUMENT Citation Only John White. Ted Goebel.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The geochemical sourcing of artifacts manufactured on volcanic materials has often been used as a proxy for levels of landscape learning and mobility among Paleoindian peoples. Moreover, when traced to known sources, the distribution of volcanic materials has informed studies of specific conveyance patterns. The Walker Road site in the Nenana valley of central...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Lauren Kohut.

During the Late Intermediate Period (AD 1000–1450), frequent warfare radically transformed the landscape of the Colca Valley in the southern Peruvian highlands. Widespread fortification not only marked a new defensive landscape, but also reflected and reinforced broader social and political transformations—including increasing settlement nucleation and the coalescence of new ethnic identities. Although many of the valley's fortifications were largely abandoned following the region's...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Katherine Rose.

Ancient Egypt is characterized as a highly centralized and dominating state. However, following the disintegration of the New Kingdom in the 11th century BC, division of state and conquests by foreign rulers ushered in a period of economic decline and political instability. The fracturing of dominion continued until the 8th century BC, when the Nubian kingdom of Kush unified Upper and Lower Egypt into the geographically largest empire since the New Kingdom. The Nubian pharaohs began...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcello Canuto. Luke Auld-Thomas.

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. In 2016, the Pacunam Lidar Initiative surveyed 2,100 km2 of the Maya Biosphere Reserve in the Department of Petén, Guatemala. This lidar survey provided an unprecedented scale of settlement data that attest to elevated population levels throughout the southern Maya lowlands, especially for the Late...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Pedro Ramon Celis.

This is an abstract from the "Checking the Pulse: Current Research in Oaxaca Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this paper, I will discuss how Zapotecs both continued and innovated the construction traditions from the central valleys of Oaxaca in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec by showing the results of the analysis of the lidar scan made during the 2022–2023 field season of the Guiengola Archaeological Project. The archaeological site of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only José Luis Punzo Díaz. Carmen Ramos Osnaya. Fernanda Navarro Sandoval.

This is an abstract from the "Tzintzuntzan, Capital of the Tarascan Empire: New Perspectives" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In this poster we will present the data derived from systematic surface prospections within one of these vapatzaquas, the neighborhood of San Pablo, Tzintzuntzan, which is one of the most important in the city, since inside it is located the Great Platform with the five yácatas, as well as another of the largest platforms of...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Kennedy.

Mineral mining was a critical driver of the Peruvian economy during the early colonial period (AD 1550 – 1700). Peru's mineral wealth was used to fund the Spanish empire's geopolitical domination, often at the expense of indigenous Peruvians. Many were forced to labor in distant mines and work camps, decimating local communities. The south-central highlands of Peru were an especially rich area for mineral exploitation and mines, work camps, and processing mills have been identified throughout...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Thompson.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper compares the developmental trajectories of two Classic Period (AD 300 – 800) Maya centers, Ix Kuku’il and Uxbenká, located in the southern foothills of the Maya Mountains, Toledo District, Belize. High-precision radiocarbon dates and ceramic sequences from household contexts inform the chronological development within these communities. Initial...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Garrison.

Conflict pervaded the civilizations of ancient Mesoamerica from an early time. In the Maya lowlands, the physical vestiges of defensive fortifications date to the Late Preclassic period, while textual evidence of conflict comes from the subsequent Early Classic period. This paper examines settlement changes within the context of a contested landscape. The Buenavista Valley, largely controlled during the Classic period by the kingdom of El Zotz, extends out west from the great city of Tikal....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jessica Munson.

This is an abstract from the "People and Space: Defining Communities and Neighborhoods with Social Network Analysis" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent studies using network analysis in archaeology seek to understand the interactions and structures that defined past societies. Such approaches are based on graph theoretic models that are simplifications of reality used to conceptualize and describe relationships, either qualitatively or...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paula Kay Lazrus.

In the early 1800s the majority of Bova's citizens live in their hilltop town while holding small plots of land in multiple locations, some quite a distance from the town itself. Archival records from notaries, diaries, and cadastral holdings paint a picture of an independent community of low income citizens plying their trades and rather detached from the larger economic systems around them. Despite the abundance of natural resources available in the landscape, the community was not fully...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Farrell. Brian Bates. Craig Rose. Walter Witschey.

Where cultural resources are increasingly threatened by the effects of a changing climate, the old model of preservation in place is no longer sustainable. For resource managers charged with the preservation of our cultural heritage, effective stewardship demands that managers are in a position to make data-driven decisions to prioritize the deployment of scarce financial resources to the most vulnerable cultural resources. Nowhere in Virginia are the effects of climate change more apparent than...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Hannah Lipps. Erik Otarola-Castillo.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Loma Oases are ecosystems unique to the arid central-western coast of South America, formed by the winter fog that accumulates on the slopes of the Andean foothills. They become seasonal homes to a unique and diverse suite of plant and animal species. Consequently, archaeologists hypothesize that Loma environments were vital to prehistoric Peruvian...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelsey Reese. Sean Field. Robert Weiner.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Britton Shepardson.

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 island communities of Oceania, and none more so than that of Rapa Nui (Easter Island, Chile), continue to develop their economies, modern identities, and narratives of their cultural past based on plentiful archaeological remains that are visited by hundreds, or even thousands, of people on a daily basis. While archaeologists surge...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Paula Kay Lazrus.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The town of Bova, located in the foothills of the Aspromonte in the province of Reggio Calabria, Italy, once dominated a region rich in forests and woods. Travelers from the 15th – 19th centuries commented upon the rich vegetation. Archival records ranging from tax declarations to legal disputes refer to the presence of trees and forests in locations around...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stephen Whittington.

Chiyo Cahnu, a Mixtec mountaintop capital, is unusual in relation to the archaeology of Oaxaca. Mapping one square kilometer of the capital using powerful GPS devices between 2013 and 2017 revealed about 370 building sites, almost 2,400 agricultural and residential terraces, and ancient roads constructed on the steep slopes of Cerro Amole. The building sites range in complexity from single rooms to compounds with temples and dozens of rooms surrounding patios. The ball court is 45 meters long,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Kathryn Arthur. Sean Stretton. Matthew C. Curtis.

In 2011, we began a collaborative project with Boreda Gamo communities of southern Ethiopia to understand the spatial and historical relationships between settlements and sacred areas. Community elders guided us along winding footpaths that ascended 9 mountain tops leading to settlements that were first occupied in the early 13th century and have now been abandoned for nearly 100 years. Surrounding these historic settlements are sacred groves with springs, caves, and boulders that give physical...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Justin Lowry. Skelly Skolnick. Adam Benfer.

This is an abstract from the "Reconstructing the Political Organization of Pre-Columbian Nicaragua" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Settlement patterns within Central America can lead to a better understanding of the political and social complexity of the region. Although this method has been extensively used across archaeological regions, Nicaraguan archaeology can benefit from this settlement analysis because of the inclusion of a GIS-based...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Stefanie Wai.

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. While archaeologists in the last decade have made significant advances to the archaeology of Tiwanaku and the surrounding Lake Titicaca Basin in present day Bolivia, much remains unknown about the everyday domestic practices leading up to the rise of the Tiwanaku state. Moreover, few studies globally have attempted to explore the advanced use of GIS analyses...

DOCUMENT Citation Only J. Guzman.

Mapping Prehistoric Behavior Patterns at a Lithic Tool Stone Source in the Colorado Desert: Results of Geospatial Analysis at CA-IMP-008/H This paper sets out results obtained following a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) analysis of the spatial patterning of stone tools at a study area in the Colorado Desert of southern California. Stone tools are examined based on their utility for an explanation of their use and importance in the lives of prehistoric foragers. Current efforts to...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Crimmel. Yimeng Yan.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Ariel Texis Muñoz. Tanya Catignani. Nawa Sugiyama. Saburo Sugiyama.

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...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brian Bauer. Matthew Piscitelli.

The Cuzco Ceque System was composed of 328 shrines (huacas) organized along 41 lines (ceques) that radiated out from the city of Cuzco, the Inca capital. Historic research indicates that the ceque system was conceptually linked to the fundamental social divisions of the Cuzco region. The ceque system of Cuzco has been frequently discussed in the literature, and anthropologists and historians have long speculated on the locations of shrines in the system and the projection of the ceque lines. The...