The Road Less Traveled By: Integrating Least Cost Path Modeling with Ethnographic and Historical Evidence for Analysis of Aksumite Trade Networks

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Ancient Pedestrians: Current Research in GIS-Based Movement Modeling for Archaeology" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Least Cost Path (LCP) Modeling, often performed by Geographic Information System (GIS) software, has had important impacts in archaeology over the past few decades. Optimality centered models of human behavior have been criticized for overemphasizing the role of energetic efficiency. However, it is important to emphasize that LCP models do not necessarily assume people choose the most energetically efficient routes but instead LCP models are heuristically useful in helping to identify instances in which the most common routes of travel diverge from what are seemingly the most energetically optimal. This paper examines and works to integrate LCP modeling with ethnographic and historical evidence of trade routes for the highlands of northern Ethiopia with specific emphasis on settlement patterns and trade networks of the Aksumite Empire.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Ancient Pedestrians: Current Research in GIS-Based Movement Modeling for Archaeology

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52741