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Process and Meaning in Spatial Archaeology examines Northern Iroquoian archaeology through various lenses at multiple spatial levels, including individual households, village constructions, relationships between villages in a local region, and relationships between various Iroquoian nations and their territorial homelands. The volume includes scholars and scholarship from both sides of the US-Canadian border, presenting a contextualized analysis of settlement and landscape for a broad range of past Northern Iroquoian societies. The research in this volume represents a new wave of spatial research—exploring beyond settlement patterning to the process and the meaning behind spatial arrangement of past communities and people—and describes new approaches being used for better understanding of past Northern Iroquoian societies. Addressing topics ranging from household task-scapes and gender relations to bioarchaeology and social network analysis, Process and Meaning in Spatial Archaeology demonstrates the vitality of current archaeological research into ancestral Northern Iroquoian societies and its growing contribution to wider debates in North American archaeology. This cutting-edge research will be of interest to archaeologists globally, as well as academics and graduate students studying Northern Iroquoian societies and cultures, geography, and spatial analysis. Contributors: Kathleen M. S. Allen, Jennifer A. Birch, William Engelbrecht, Crystal Forrest, John P. Hart, Sandra Katz, Robert H. Pihl, Aleksandra Pradzynski, Erin C. Rodriguez, Dean R. Snow, Ronald F. Williamson, Rob Wojtowicz
"Examines Northern Iroquoian archaeology through various lenses at multiple spatial levels, including individual households, village constructions, relationships between villages in a local region, and relationships between various Iroquoian nations and their homelands. Scholarship from both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border, presents contextualize
Geographical Information Systems has moved from the domain of the computer specialist into the wider archaeological community, providing it with an exciting new research method. This clearly written but rigorous book provides a comprehensive guide to that use. Topics covered include: the theoretical context and the basics of GIS; data acquisition including database design; interpolation of elevation models; exploratory data analysis including spatial queries; statistical spatial analysis; map algebra; spatial operations including the calculation of slope and aspect, filtering and erosion modeling; methods for analysing regions; visibility analysis; network analysis including hydrological modeling; the production of high quality output for paper and electronic publication; and the use and production of metadata. Offering an extensive range of archaeological examples, it is an invaluable source of practical information for all archaeologists, whether engaged in cultural resource management or academic research. This is essential reading for both the novice and the advanced user.
Effective spatial analysis is an essential element of archaeological research; this book is a unique guide to choosing the appropriate technique, applying it correctly and understanding its implications both theoretically and practically. Focusing upon the key techniques used in archaeological spatial analysis, this book provides the authoritative, yet accessible, methodological guide to the subject which has thus far been missing from the corpus. Each chapter tackles a specific technique or application area and follows a clear and coherent structure. First is a richly referenced introduction to the particular technique, followed by a detailed description of the methodology, then an archaeological case study to illustrate the application of the technique, and conclusions that point to the implications and potential of the technique within archaeology. The book is designed to function as the main textbook for archaeological spatial analysis courses at undergraduate and post-graduate level, while its user-friendly structure makes it also suitable for self-learning by archaeology students as well as researchers and professionals.
This book focusses on new technologies and multi-method research designs in the field of modern archaeology, which increasingly crosses academic boundaries to investigate past human-environmental relationships and to reconstruct palaeolandscapes. It aims at establishing the concept of Digital Geoarcheology as a novel approach of interdisciplinary collaboration situated at the scientific interface between classical studies, geosciences and computer sciences. Among others, the book includes topics such as geographic information systems, spatiotemporal analysis, remote sensing applications, laser scanning, digital elevation models, geophysical prospecting, data fusion and 3D visualisation, categorized in four major sections. Each section is introduced by a general thematic overview and followed by case studies, which vividly illustrate the broad spectrum of potential applications and new research designs. Mutual fields of work and common technologies are identified and discussed from different scholarly perspectives. By stimulating knowledge transfer and fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, Digital Geoarchaeology helps generate valuable synergies and contributes to a better understanding of ancient landscapes along with their forming processes. Chapters 1, 2, 6, 8 and 14 are published open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com.
This 1976 text is a pioneering study in the applications to archaeology of modern statistical and quantitative techniques. The authors show how these techniques, when sensitively employed, can dramatically extend and refine the information presented in distribution maps and other analyses of spatial relationships. Techniques of interpretation 'by inspection' can now be made more powerful and rigorous; at the same time interest has turned from the examination of such sites and artefacts as 'things' to the spatial relationships between such things, their relationships to one another and to landscape features, soils and other resources. This book was the first to apply the available techniques systematically to the special problems and interests of archaeologists. It also demonstrates to geographers and other social scientists who may be familiar with analogous applications in their own fields the exciting interdisciplinary developments this facilitates, for example in studies of exchange networks, trade and settlement patterns, and cultural history.
Without realizing, most archaeologists shift within a scale of interpretation of material culture. Material data is interpreted from the scale of an individual in a specific place and time, then shifted to the complex dynamics of cultural groups spread over time and place. This book discusses the cultural, social and spatial aspects of scale and its impact on archaeology, and shows how an improved awareness of scale offers new and exciting interpretations.
Elements of Architecture explores new ways of engaging architecture in archaeology. It conceives of architecture both as the physical evidence of past societies and as existing beyond the physical environment, considering how people in the past have not just dwelled in buildings but have existed within them. The book engages with the meeting point between these two perspectives. For although archaeologists must deal with the presence and absence of physicality as a discipline, which studies humans through things, to understand humans they must also address the performances, as well as temporal and affective impacts, of these material remains. The contributions in this volume investigate the way time, performance and movement, both physically and emotionally, are central aspects of understanding architectural assemblages. It is a book about the constellations of people, places and things that emerge and dissolve as affective, mobile, performative and temporal engagements. This volume juxtaposes archaeological research with perspectives from anthropology, architecture, cultural geography and philosophy in order to explore the kaleidoscopic intersections of elements coming together in architecture. Documenting the ephemeral, relational, and emotional meeting points with a category of material objects that have defined much research into what it means to be human, Elements of Architecture elucidates and expands upon a crucial body of evidence which allows us to explore the lives and interactions of past societies.
There has been an increasing archaeological interest in human-animal-nature relations, where archaeology has shifted from a focus on deciphering meaning, or understanding symbols and the social construction of the landscape to an acknowledgment of how things, places, and the environment contribute with their own agencies to the shaping of relations.This means that the environment cannot be regarded as a blank space that landscape meaning is projected onto. Parallel to this, the field of environmental humanities poses the question of how to work with the intermeshing of humans and their surroundings.To allow the environment back in as an active agent of change, means that landscape archaeology can deal better with issues such as global warming, an escalating loss of biodiversity, as well as increasingly toxic environment. However, this does not leave human agency out of the equation. It is humans who reinforce the environmental challenges of today.The scholarly field of the humanities deal with questions like how is meaning attributed, what cultural factors drive human action, what role is played by ethics, how is landscape experienced emotionally, as well as how concepts derived from art, literature, and history function in such processes of meaning attribution and other cultural processes. This humanities approach is of utmost importance when dealing with climate and environmental challenges ahead and we need a new landscape archaeology that meets these challenges, but also that meets well across disciplinary boundaries. Here inspiration can be found in discussions with scholars in the emerging field of Environmental Humanities.