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

Author(s): Nicholas Triozzi

Year: 2016

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.

Cite this Record

All methods, no madness: Making sense of burial orientations using GIS. Nicholas Triozzi. Presented at The 81st Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Orlando, Florida. 2016 ( tDAR id: 404821)

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Keywords

General
Gis Mapping mortuary

Geographic Keywords
North America - Southeast

Spatial Coverage

min long: -91.274; min lat: 24.847 ; max long: -72.642; max lat: 36.386 ;