Full-coverage survey techniques in the mountains of the Sierra Sur, Oaxaca, Mexico.

Summary

This poster presents full-coverage mountain survey methodologies in light of the development of GPS technologies and GIS software and data during the last decade. Oaxaca, Mexico is a well-known area for settlement pattern research as various successful full-coverage regional survey projects have been done there. Settlement data of the Oaxaca region, gathered using full-coverage survey methods, have produced large continuous datasets of the spatial distribution of archaeological remains. Improvements in GPS equipment and GIS software give us the ability to adapt full-coverage survey methods to local environments producing rich datasets. With the use of GIS it is possible to combine data layers, local knowledge, and judgmental sample strategies to develop a survey strategy tailored to the local region. High accuracy GPS and its ability to customize the kinds of descriptive and metric data offer the ability to expedite work in the field and shorten time spent post-processing geospatial datasets. The Nejapa Valley region and the Quiechapa frontier region will be used as case studies to illustrate the usefulness of GPS technology and GIS software to setup and execute a regional survey project.

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

Keywords

Spatial Coverage