Assessing the Quality of CRM Data for Field Planning, “Big Data” Analyses, and Heritage Decisions: The Role of Sweep Widths

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Refining Archaeological Data Collection and Management to Achieve Greater Scientific, Traditional, and Educational Values" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Sweep width is a basic measure of survey effectiveness that has long informed search-and-rescue operations but is only slowly finding application in archaeological survey, mainly by fieldwalking. By “calibrating” field teams by having them survey tracts sewn with artifacts in known locations, it is possible to estimate sweep widths for a variety of artifact types and visibility contexts. These estimates can then serve to help us decide effective transect spacings, evaluate the probability that survey has missed particular kinds of targets, and make the results of surveys with different levels of intensity more easily comparable. Although it can also be adapted to shovel-testing and other surveys, this paper will demonstrate the use of sweep width in fieldwalking and discuss its costs and benefits for allowing us to assess and improve surveys’ accuracy and reliability. It will only briefly introduce a software platform, still under development, to assist in the determination of sweep widths.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Refining Archaeological Data Collection and Management to Achieve Greater Scientific, Traditional, and Educational Values

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32643