Date of Award

1-1-2011

Language

English

Document Type

Master's Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

College/School/Department

Department of Anthropology

Content Description

1 online resource (v, 91 pages) : illustrations (some color), color map.

Dissertation/Thesis Chair

Sean M Rafferty

Committee Members

Christina B Rieth

Keywords

archaeology, cultural resources management, geostatistics, GIS, intrasite analysis, quantitative spatial analysis, Spatial analysis (Statistics) in archaeology, Geographic information systems, Quantitative research

Subject Categories

Cultural Resource Management and Policy Analysis | Geographic Information Sciences | History of Art, Architecture, and Archaeology

Abstract

This thesis presents a brief overview of quantitative spatial analysis in archaeology with a discussion of the theoretical and methodological issues involved, and describes a set of methods for using Geographic Information System (GIS) software and spatial statistics for the assessment of archaeological resources. GIS has become a nearly ubiquitous and indispensable tool in many fields of resource management including archaeology. It is, however, applied by archaeologists most frequently for basic cartographic representations, large-scale regional analyses, or resource management data warehousing. Such applications underutilize the scale-independence of GIS, which is equally potent for intra-project data assessment. This thesis describes a set of GIS, geographical, and geostatistical techniques for the initial assessment of survey data in the identification and delineation of site boundaries, intra-site spatial analysis of cultural material to facilitate the assessment of site integrity, and expedient visualizations of these data through spatial correlation overlays.

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