One Home, Two Periods, Three Buffers, Four Models: A Visibility Analysis Case Study From Historical Oakland

Summary

This is a poster submission presented at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Viewshed analysis is a powerful tool employed by archaeologists to understand the experiences of people in the past. At their core, such analyses estimate what parts of the landscape people could see from specific locations. To do this, these models accept assumptions about similarities between past and present landscapes and statistical complications involved in quantification, such as the modified area unit problem. This poster introduces how to use free, online-available spatial data to model and quantify visibility from two iterations of the Ladies' Relief Society of Oakland Children’s Home (now the Studio One Arts center) to explore the influence of these assumptions and complications. By varying th reconstruction of historical landscape topography, the categorization of modern land use, and the definition of meaningful distance, this poster assesses the influence these variables have on interpreting what children could see from institutional dormitories and our understanding of the historical landscape of Oakland.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2024   •
• 2024 SHA Poster Submissions

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow