Digital Archaeology: GIS (Other Keyword)
276-300 (422 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster employs digital archaeological mapping methods such as photogrammetry and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to examine domestic labor practices, architectural style, and town planning at Rumiqolqa, a massive colony in Cusco, Peru where a multi-ethnic population of forcibly resettled workers quarried stone for Inca and then Spanish colonial...
Photogrammetry, Spatial Patterning, and Site Formation of the Hominin-Bearing Layers at the Lower Paleolithic Site of Dmanisi, Georgia (2018)
The Lower Paleolithic site of Dmanisi, Georgia, is well known for its rich archaeological and paleontological deposits, which include bones from at least five individuals attributed to Homo erectus. Taphonomic analyses show that carnivores contributed greatly to the accumulation of faunal material, while contributions by hominins were present, but uncommon. Recent excavations in the hominin-bearing layers of Block 2 at Dmanisi have revealed a complex underlying basalt formation that likely...
A Place to Heal: Archaeology at St. Elizabeths Hospital (2018)
Established in 1852 as the Government Hospital for the Insane, St. Elizabeths is situated on a bluff overlooking the historic City of Washington. Charles Nichols, the first superintendent, sought to provide a therapeutic setting in a picturesque environment for mentally ill patients to recover. Originally located outside the main core of the city, the campus has witnessed massive changes over its 150 years of operation. These changes often coincided with innovative new treatment practices for...
Placemaking in Southwestern Oregon (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study takes a Geographic Information Systems approach to understanding the role of place in determining settlement patterns in southwestern Oregon. Persistent use of settlement locations transforms these spaces to places, or locations where memory and identity become embedded. In order to test how this phenomena influences settlement location, a site...
Places, Ports and Their People: The Rise of the Peruvian Post-Colonial State in the Arequipa Coast (2018)
In this paper I provide insight into the earliest decades of the Peruvian post-colonial state (1821-1879) from the vantage point of the Arequipa coast. The Andean south, with its center in Arequipa, had a traditional mercantile basis that favored improvements in trade, particularly those that resulted in the rapprochement of the city of Arequipa to the sea. After independence (1821-1824), new ports were established; the operation of certain coves sanctioned; and extractive activities shaped the...
Post-Classic Canal Excavations at Yaxnohcah, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Yaxnohcah is a large site in Campeche, Mexico with evidence of continual occupation from the early Middle Preclassic into the Postclassic. In 2014, the Yaxnohcah Archaeological Project commissioned a high resolution lidar scan of the region, which has allowed for accurate modeling of surface hydrology and significantly contributed to our understanding of...
Prearchaic Settlement Decisions in the Great Basin (2018)
Researchers propose that the first people to occupy the Great Basin preferentially settled near pluvial lakes to exploit highly profitable wetland habitats. However, a systematic evaluation of this hypothesis has yet to be undertaken. Here we test predictions from an ideal free distribution model to determine if the settlement decisions of Prearchaic foragers were indeed biased toward pluvial ecosystems. The results not only elucidate Prearchaic settlement patterns, but also establish...
Precontact Indigenous Fire Stewardship: From the Valley to the Forest (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Future Directions for Archaeology and Heritage Research in the Willamette Valley, Oregon" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Indigenous peoples lived in the Willamette Valley and adjacent highly productive upland forests for millennia and successfully coexisted with the region’s fire regimes. Like today, wildfires posed a threat to past societies and their livelihoods. Precontact Indigenous peoples of the Willamette...
Predictive Modeling of Early Archaic Bolen Site Distribution in Northwestern Florida, USA (2018)
Site visibility has long been an issue for late Pleistocene/early Holocene research in the southeastern United States, partially due to modern forest cover and partially due to large portions of the Southeast having been submerged by more than 80 meters of sea level rise. However, a large number of Late Paleoindian/Early Archaic Bolen artifacts have been discovered in Jefferson and Taylor counties in northern Florida, including dozens from underwater sites that were inundated...
Predictive Modeling of Paleoindian and Archaic Sites across Florida with GIS (2018)
Florida’s terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene archaeological sites form interesting settlement patterns when projected upon various geographic representations. Probably many unknown Paleoindian and Early Archaic sites still remain hidden and unstudied, as more than half of Florida’s landmass was inundated during these cultural periods. Due to constraints in visibility and access, the practical limits of traditional survey hinder progress in discovering additional sites around the state. With...
Prehistoric Lake Cahuilla Shorelines Identified Using a Systematic Satellite Photograph and Ground Truth Methodology, Salton Sea Region, Imperial County, California (2018)
Lake Cahuilla is the archaeological representation of the modern Salton Sea and represents one of the largest rift lakes in the Western Hemisphere. Formed in the Salton Basin by western-trending Colorado River runoff, in-fillings and outflows from the Colorado to the Lake and thence into the Gulf of California were episodic yet constrained by the vast Colorado River Delta. Because modern agricultural development has buried many of the ancient shorelines, the Lake’s Holocene oscillation history...
Preliminary Analysis of Landscape – Social Complexity Relationship Changes from Neolithic to Bronze Age in South Carpathian Basin (2018)
The onset of the Early Bronze Age saw increasing degrees of social inequality and institutionalized leadership in most of Europe. In the Carpathian Basin these changes are most evident in shifts in burial practices and settlements. This research aims to see if these changes are reflected in regional settlement patterns by applying spatial analyses to two periods of a regional settlement dataset. I will examine the landscape and the environmental characteristics of Neolithic and Bronze Age...
A Preliminary Analysis of the Spatial Distribution of Prehistoric Sites within a 4,300-Acre Block of the Tularosa Basin, White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. An ongoing cultural resource inventory on White Sands Missile Range in southern New Mexico identified over 100 prehistoric and multicomponent sites in the valley bottom of the Tularosa Basin, greatly exceeding the anticipated number of prehistoric resources for the approximately 4,300-acre study area. In an effort to elucidate a better understanding of the...
A Preliminary Assessment of Athapaskan Land-Use Strategies in the Central High Plains (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Athapaskans entered the Central High Plains as part of a large migration from the Yukon River Basin. As these populations left the basin and moved south, they encountered new resources, resource distributions, landforms, and competition with local communities that would have challenged their existing land-use strategies, including settlement and mobility. This...
Preliminary Investigations into the Site of Chullpa K’asa in Southwestern Bolivia (2018)
The site of Chullpa K’asa, located in the Potosí Department of southwestern Bolivia, covers an area of around 45 hectares and contains the ruins of dozens of Prehispanic buildings. This poster presents the results of preliminary investigations of the site based on pedestrian ground survey and an assessment of artifacts housed at a nearby Indigenous museum. Systematic survey and mapping, which included the recording of surface artifacts at 43 locations across the site, revealed two areas of...
Preliminary LiDAR-based Analyses of the La Corona – El Achiotal Corridor (2018)
Located in the northwestern Petén, Guatemala, the Maya sites of La Corona and El Achiotal have been investigated since 2008 by a multi-disciplinary US and Guatemalan research project. While a primary goal of this project has been to reconstruct the region’s political history, we have also investigated the management of local resources and general human impact on the landscape. In 2016, a LIDAR survey, funded by the Pacunam Foundation and operated by NCALM, was undertaken in a 410 square km...
A Preliminary Spatial Analysis of the Late Pleistocene Components at the McDonald Creek Site, Interior Alaska (2021)
This is an abstract from the "McDonald Creek and Blair Lakes: Late Pleistocene-Holocene Human Activity in the Tanana Flats of Central Alaska" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The McDonald Creek site (FAI-2043) is located about 30 miles south of Fairbanks, Alaska, in the Tanana Flats. Results of archaeological testing and excavations between 2013 and 2019 identified three distinct archaeological components, Components 1, 2, and 3 dating to about 13.8...
Preserving the Faith: Archaeological Investigations at Mission San Lorenzo (41RE1), Camp Wood, Texas (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Franciscan mission of San Lorenzo, established in 1762, survived for 6 years as an unsanctioned mission before closing its doors in 1768. Since its abandonment, the site has suffered from both the ravages of time and human interference. Today, the mission is located in the small community of Camp Wood, Texas where it has long been an important part of...
Producing the City-State: GIS Modeling of Rural Land Use in Medieval Tuscany (2018)
From 900 to 1300 AD, Italy underwent sweeping cultural changes – the rise of market economies, increased trade and commerce, and new forms of governance. Typically, the elite are cast as the drivers of these shifts, yet it was rural labor that produced the goods (particularly foodstuffs) traded in the cities, collected in the form of rent and taxes, and transformed into capital. This paper examines the impact of rural landscape strategies during the development of the medieval city-state of...
Prosaic Biases: Independent Factors Contributing to the Definition of the Classic and Colonial Archaeological Record of New Mexico, USA (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Ann F. Ramenofsky: Papers in Honor of a Non-Normative Career" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological records are knowledge palimpsests of the research agendas responsible for identifying and defining these records. When evaluating the representativeness of these records, biases inherent to the research agendas themselves, ranging from methodological approaches to political considerations, are typically...
Purposeful Unpatterning: Investigating Maroon Site Distribution In Colonial Florida (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the colonial era, Spanish Florida built a reputation as a refuge for self-liberated people escaping from slavery in the Carolinas and Georgia. However, following the Treaty of Paris in 1763, Florida was passed from one government to another and the Maroons’ freedom was under constant threat. Florida Maroons were constantly on the move and their...
Puruwá Polity under Inka Rule in Colta, Chimborazo Province (Ecuador) (2018)
The Inka incorporated the territory of today's Ecuador to the Tawantinsuyu around 1420. This conquest is well documented from South to North by recording the expansion of monumental features such as pukaras, tambos, bridges, terraces, collkas, wakas, patios and plazas, built in traditional Inka style. The political transformation of northern Andes landscape by the Inka was very profound in the Loja and Azuay provinces of southern Ecuador. While it was a milder transformative factor around Quito...
Push and Pull, Part II: Modeling the Inland Exploration and Settlement of Fiji (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. Previous GIS-based analyses (2017) by the authors have identified the ranges of several classes of terrestrial fauna that would inhabited the island of Viti Levu in prehistory. The ranges and habits of reptiles (giant tortoises, iguanas, and snakes), flightless birds (megapodes and giant pigeons), and bat and seabird colonies intersect in...
Quantifying the Qualitative: Locating North-Central Kansas Burial Mounds (2018)
Scattered through parts of northeastern and north-central Kansas are prehistoric burial sites in the form of low rock and earthen mounds located atop bluffs overlooking stream valleys. In Kansas, the Unmarked Burial Sites Preservation Act exists to protect these sites, but this law is only effective if the location of these features is known. Most prehistoric mounds in this region are subtle in appearance, making them difficult to recognize. If sites are not recorded and protected, they may be...
Quantitatively Modeling the Relationship between Watershed Size and Site Size in Sixth–Tenth-Century Gila and Mimbres Regions, Southwestern New Mexico (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Mogollon, Mimbres, and Salado Archaeology in Southwest New Mexico and Beyond" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This project quantitatively investigates the relationship between watershed size and site size within the Gila and Mimbres regions of southwestern New Mexico. Throughout the later first millennium CE, larger sites in these regions tended to occupy areas where smaller tributaries flowed into primary drainage...