Novel Statistical Techniques in Archaeology II (QUANTARCH II)

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Novel Statistical Techniques in Archaeology II (QUANTARCH II)," at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Statistical data modeling is fundamental to archaeological inquiry. This type of modeling is

applicable to all research questions, and serves to evaluate how well archaeological observations

support theoretical expectations. Pioneering archaeological questions, however, are not always

answerable with standard techniques - requiring development of innovative modeling methods. The

purpose of this symposium is to exhibit the range of cutting-edge analytical techniques advanced to

evaluate novel archaeological hypotheses. Symposium participants answer groundbreaking

archaeological hypotheses regarding cultural variability by developing or adapting a wide range of

analytical modeling methods derived from computational, mathematical, spatial, statistical, and

graphical approaches. (This topic spans two poster symposia)

Other Keywords
Quantitative and Spatial Analysis • Digital Archaeology: Simulation and Modeling • Zooarchaeology • Settlement patterns • Digital Archaeology: GIS • Paleolithic • Paleoindian and Paleoamerican • Subsistence and Foodways • Survey • Predictive Modeling

Geographic Keywords
United States of America (Country) • North America (Continent) • USA (Country) • North America • New Mexico (State / Territory) • Oklahoma (State / Territory) • Arizona (State / Territory) • Texas (State / Territory) • Sonora (State / Territory) • Chihuahua (State / Territory)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-15 of 15)

  • Documents (15)
Documents
  • All for Drone and Drone for Free: A Free and/or Open-Source Workflow for UAV Imagery Collection and Analysis (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Kelsey Reese.

    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...

  • Application of a Novel Machine Learning Methodology to the Study of Dipodomys spp. Response to El Niño Southern Oscillation events Throughout the Holocene (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Kasey Cole. Peter Yaworsky.

    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. El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events influence climatic variation on a global scale, considerably impacting modern human and animal populations. There is, however, a dearth of literature regarding the long-term effects of ENSO variation on prehistoric vertebrate populations. Here we examine how kangaroo rat (Dipodomys...

  • Archaeological Applications of Optimal Foraging Theory: Employing Bayesian probability modeling to estimate profitability parameters for rare and extinct prey (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jacob Harris. Andrew Bishop. Christopher Brooke. Kim Hill. Curtis Marean.

    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. Reconstructing the subsistence strategies of past hominin populations remains one of the most important endeavors of archaeological studies. However, the presence and relative frequency of species alone, recovered as faunal material in archaeological contexts, is insufficient to reconstruct the complex foraging decisions made...

  • Comparing the Performance of Machine Learning and Traditional Approaches to Archaeological Site Modeling and Prediction (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Ben Schiery. Paul Burnett. Lawrence C. Todd. Erik Otárola-Castillo. Benjamin Schiery.

    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. Site prediction models have helped archaeological resource management in site prospecting, impact mitigation, and information recovery. Beginning in 2009, we developed probability models for the Shoshone National Forest (SNF). These models helped to prioritize inventory of areas burned in wildfires, to rapidly appraise...

  • Dynamic Simulation of Large Herbivore Distribution during the Last Glacial Maximum: Implications for the Distribution of Human Populations (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Samuel Seuru. Liliana Perez. Ariane Burke.

    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. In this study we propose the use of agent-based modelling (ABM) and cellular automata (CA) to test the impact of predator-prey relationships on the distribution of prehistoric human populations. Our research goal is to establish a dynamic model of the distribution of large herbivores that constituted the main food source for...

  • Estimating the Effect of Endogenous Spatial Dependency with a Hierarchical Bayesian CAR Model on Archaeological Site Location Data (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Matthew Harris. Mary Lennon.

    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. This research presents a method to test the endogenous spatial correlation effect when modeling the landscape sensitivity for archaeological sites. The effects of endogenous spatial correlation are inferred using a Hierarchical Bayesian model with an Conditional Auto-Regressive (CAR) component to better understand the...

  • Evaluating Archaeological Predictability Across the Western United States (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Paul Burnett.

    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. Human behavior is patterned in relation to the environment, and these patterns are approximated by the archaeological record. Similarly, the ability to discover archaeological material is patterned in relation to the environment. Geographic Information Systems and statistical software have been used to develop multiple...

  • Evaluating Differential Animal Carcass Transport Decisions at Regional Scales using Bayesian Mixed-Effects Models (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Ryan Breslawski.

    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. Zooarchaeologists frequently face the problem of explaining uneven skeletal element representation, with explanations involving either non-human taphonomic agents or differential carcass transport decisions made by humans. Existing statistical methods for evaluating these explanations are generally applicable at the...

  • Evaluating the Efficacy of Regression and Machine Learning Models to Predict Prehistoric Land-use Patterns (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Peter Yaworsky. Kenneth B. Vernon. Simon Brewer. Jerry Spangler. Brian Codding.

    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. Archaeologists continue to rely on predictive models that suffer from the same errors that have plagued the discipline for decades: small training sets, improper statistical techniques, and vague or only implicit theory. To address these shortcomings, we develop a framework for modeling archaeological site occurrences with...

  • Exploring Seasonal Aspects of Past Herding Systems Using Bayesian Modeling of Animal δ13C and δ18O Enamel Isotopic Profiles (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Jesse Wolfhagen.

    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. Intra-tooth samples of enamel δ18O and δ13C isotopic values produce isotopic profiles that reflect seasonal fluctuations in temperature, precipitation, and dietary composition. Archaeologists have interpreted trends found in animal isotopic profiles to estimate birth seasonality and to elucidate past management strategies...

  • How Precise Are My Survey Data? GNSS Receivers Test and Comparison (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Simon Paquin. Samuel Seuru. Ariane Burke. François Girard.

    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. Archaeological surveys using GNSS receivers (Global Navigation Satellite System) to register artefact location generally state the accuracy of used devices, but rarely discuss the precision of resulting data. In other words, we have an idea of how "true" individual points are, but not as much regarding the statistical...

  • Isolating the Principal Dimensions of Settlement (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Kenneth Kvamme.

    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. In regional investigations of settlement location the analyst typically assumes that appropriate variables have been identified—important variables have not been omitted and irrelevant ones have not been included—an assumption not always justified. The identification of a "minimum set" of location requirements is more...

  • New Simulation Tools for the Design and Assessment of Subsurface Testing Programs: Dig It Design It and Dig It Check It (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Amy Way. Amy Tabrett.

    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. There is a general awareness among archaeologists that the intensity of a sampling program, i.e. the number of pits, their size and their spacing, has a strong bearing on discovery rates. However, rarely is the effect of this relationship explicitly assessed due to the difficulty of running the required mathematical models....

  • Quantitative Analysis of Bone Surface Modifications on the Bowser Road Mastodon and its Implications for the Human Predation of North American Megafauna (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Evalyn Stow. Desiree Clark. Jacob Harris. Curtis Marean. Erik Otarola-Castillo.

    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. Toward the end of the Pleistocene, North America experienced a mass extinction of large mammals, including Proboscideans such as mammoths and mastodons. The role of human predation in these extinctions is widely debated across several scientific disciplines, including Conservation Biology, Paleontology, and Archaeology. A...

  • Using Digital Data for a Landscape Approach at Fort Campbell, Kentucky and Tennessee (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Danny Gregory. Lauren Walls.

    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. Fort Campbell has a robust dataset for cultural resources following decades of survey, testing, and monitoring projects. Recent surveys of thousands of acres have included the collection of digital data. Coupled with the complete survey coverage of large areas of the installation, this data was used for a landscape...