All methods, no madness: Making sense of burial orientations using GIS

Summary

Mapping the excavations at the Fallen Tree Mortuary Complex, St. Catherines Island, GA, effectively consolidated nearly sixty burials and hundreds of features into a cohesive view of the site. Similarity of burial orientation and bodily positioning jumps out immediately. At a glance the norm is that individuals face east with their heads to the south. Examining this pattern more closely called for a more advanced utilization of GIS. Techniques used to quantify burial orientation of the large number of individuals at Fallen Tree were successfully used on secondary sources depicting maps of mortuary sites. In this poster a model workflow is presented to benefit both novice and advanced ArcGIS users with access to either primary or secondary data. Additionally, access to a customizable toolbox that consolidates steps in the workflow is made available for download.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage