The Spatial Statistics of Owl Ridge: Identifying Activities and Camp Use

Summary

The Owl Ridge site, located in central Alaska’s Nenana Valley, is an excellent example of a stratified, three-component camp site. The three components span the late Pleistocene/early Holocene boundary with component 1 dating to 13,110-12,730 cal BP, component 2 dating to 12,580-11,310 cal BP, and component 3 dating to 11,400-10,710 cal BP. The presence of discretely dated and stratified components provides an ideal opportunity to identify local changes in land use, in the distribution of camp activity areas, and in the nature of camp activities over time. Statistical analyses including nearest neighbor, K-means clustering, and kernel density estimation were performed using ArcGIS. Tests were performed on each site component as well as within-component artifact types using both two and three dimensional views. The results demonstrate that there are distinct, statistically significant spatial arrangements of general artifact clusters and artifact clusters by type within each component. The spatial arrangement of artifact clusters differs by component illustrating site use change over time. When combined with previous spatial analyses focused on artifact raw material type, the spatial analysis at Owl Ridge reveals that humans were using the landscape and the site area in appreciably different ways during each period of occupation.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Open Air Camps of the Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene: Intra-Camp Spatial Organization, Activity Areas, and Technology

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16932