Measuring Power and Influence: GIS Modeling of Political Spheres of Influence

Summary

In an area where most of the written record is destroyed, modeling political interactions through spatial relationships with the environment and other political centers along with exchange relationships, can provide insight into regional intra-site relationships. This poster displays a theoretical model using Geographic Information Systems technology of regional heterarchical relationships between sites in the Northeastern Petén. The model is formulated by implementing hierarchical political markers and environmental elements as weighted variables to estimate political spheres of influence. Weighted Vonoroi diagrams are used to create theoretical political boundaries that provide modeled perimeters of political economies, and by extension power and influence between sites. This theoretical approach can then be measured archaeologically by using the distributional model of network exchange. Modeled boundaries coupled with the distributional approach can then test proposed theories of political allegiances and/or conflict between centers.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage