Methodological Tool or Paradigm Shifter? Assessing the Status of GIS in Archaeological Research

Over the past few decades, geospatial technologies have cemented themselves as critical tools for analyzing and synthesizing archaeological data. The number of geospatial techniques currently used in archaeology are numerous and wide ranging in their functionality, varying in theoretical underpinnings, data harnessed, mathematical and spatial formulae implemented, hardware and software required, output produced and - not least - in the questions examined about past human behavior. But to what degree are we using geospatial techniques to actually answer the hypotheses we set out for them? What kinds of insights about past social, economic, and ideological processes have been realized via these means? Do these geospatial tools have the potential to shift theoretical paradigms, fundamentally altering how we think about the past and/or the ways that archaeological research is conducted? If so, when can we expect such changes to transpire and what might these changes look like? For this session, we invite papers that identify where archaeology currently stands as a GIS-using discipline; explain how these technologies have served us well and how they could be improved; and define a new geospatially-driven research paradigm, one involving enhanced GIS inquiry and more nuanced examination of socionatural processes and transformations in the past.