Applicability of Maxent Predictive Modeling in Locating Pre-Hispanic Quarries in the Callejón de Huaylas, Peru

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Stone in the Andes is an integral component of both the natural landscape and of the material expressions of cultural beliefs and practices. Growing evidence from multiple cultures indicates preferences for stone materials from certain sources, which held political, symbolic, and ideological importance. Determining quarry locations is a vital step in analyses of the socio-political implications of material choice and relationships between people and landscape. However, in pre-Inka periods, locating material sources has often relied on pedestrian surveys and interviews with local inhabitants. Using the Recuay as a case study, this project tests the efficacy of Maximum Entropy (Maxent) predictive modeling methods to improve our ability to locate probable source locations prior to in-field surveys. Maxent modeling, commonly applied in ecological models, uses input constraints to identify the distribution of a selected feature with the maximum uncertainty (least amount of bias). Regional geologic, hydraulic, topographic, archaeological, and ethnographic data constrain the model identifying potential sources of analyzed Recuay stone sculptures. This approach will be field-tested in my upcoming dissertation research. This project contributes to the understanding of regional stone sourcing practices and its ties to socio-political negotiations between Recuay communities and to improving methodologies for archaeological survey and sourcing studies.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25761