Regional-Scale Research Sensitivity to Site Location Geomasking and Site Data Aggregation in cyberSW

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Multiscale Data and the History of Human Development in the US Southwest" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Archaeological sites, particularly habitation sites and their precise locations, are important data points in research questions about social-ecological systems or the focus of detailed descriptions of excavations documented in compliance work. But do sites or their locations actually matter in efforts to do synthetic research? Do we need sites at all for many regional-scale research questions? I rerun analyses on late precontact social networks across the Southwest US to assess 1) sensitivity of interpretations of analyses with precise site locations versus geomasked site locations, and 2) whether aggregating site data by local watersheds (i.e., HUC10 drainages) produces meaningfully different results from site-based analyses. The cyberSW database and web-based science gateway—with its built-in analysis toolkit—provides a means to quickly and systematically explore the sensitivity of research to decisions about site data and the sharing of site locations that are often determined by non-research priorities on public-facing resources such as cyberSW.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Multiscale Data and the History of Human Development in the US Southwest

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 50029