Dots on the Map: Issues in the Archaeological Analysis of Site Locations

Abstract

The analysis of site locations is an important component of archaeological research. Recent advances in this topic include the use of ecological models such as the ideal free distribution and its variants, which predict site locations under various conditions in relation to criteria that promote the greatest adaptive success. Such models can face problems in determining such criteria and especially their relative importance. Another approach, which can be used in conjunction with these models, uses the concept of decision trees to infer the relative ranking and the hierarchy of the role of different criteria in the actual locational decisions underlying site placement. Examples from ethnography and European archaeology demonstrate this approach and additionally allow the consideration of another issue, the contexts in which site function and location are likely to be strongly correlated.

A GIS Analysis of Coastal Proximity with a Prehistoric Greek Case Study

“…The spatial analysis of coastal landscapes, or coastscapes, within archaeology tends to focus on vulnerability assessment in heritage management (Ashmore 2005;Reeder, Rick & Erlandson 2012;Hil 2020;Westley et al 2023), the reconstruction of site palaeogeomorphology (Anzidei et al 2011) or predictive site modelling (Jochim 2022). 1 Considerably less prevalent are analyses of archaeological site coastal proximity and the effort of movement between site and the sea as a marker of the integration of the coastal zone into daily lives of past humans (Nuttall 2021a;2021b;Roalkvam 2023).…”