The effects of temporal coarse-graining on inferred networks of human movement

Summary

Analyses using tree-ring dates provide an attractive test-bed for examining effects of temporal coarse-graining in archaeological contexts, due to the high-resolution of dendrochronology. After compiling a database of every known tree-ring date in the U.S. Southwest, we use tree-ring-date counts and locations as proxies for gridded human population estimates in the upland portions of the SW US. Grid-squares that lose dates are connected to nearby grid squares that gain dates as we move from one time slice to the next, thus forming spatial networks of (putative) population flow. We progressively coarse-grain the cutting dates (e.g., bin them first by decade, then by 20 years, etc.) and we quantitatively monitor the effects that this coarse-graining has on the statistics calculated on the networks. These spatial networks, which we call spatial genealogies, tend to show that areas developing distinctive ceramic types and wares emerge as more-or-less separate components in a network sense. Thus, the implication is that style zones emerge because of relatively dense circulation within them, compared to sparser movement between them. In this paper we ask, At what temporal coarse-graining does this effect disappear?

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• The short and the long of it: combining timescales

Keywords

Spatial Coverage