Using GIS and Archaeological Survey Data for the Reconstruction of Stone Age Settlement Patterns in the Elephant River Valley, Mozambique

Summary

The central topic of this poster focus on the conversion of archaeological survey data to a GIS format for the identification of settlement patterns by communities that inhabited the Elephant river region, a tributary of the Limpopo River (southern Mozambique), from c. 300 to c. 20 thousand years ago. Specifically, we tried to identify and characterize the settlement dynamics of each cultural phase (MSA and LSA), in order to understand the choices related to the selection of site location in connection to natural/landscape-related factors, visual prominence in the landscape, among others. Using data collected during archaeological field survey conducted in the Elephants river valley in 2015 and 2016 and GIS techniques we explore a series of simple but important issues in relation to visibility and patterning of archaeological data. The GIS analysis were conducted using ESRI´s ArcGIS 10.3 software leveraging a variety of standard geoprocessing tools and custom geoprocessing models

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15548