Heuristic Approaches to Spatial Analysis in Archaeology

Abstract

This article discusses an approach to spatial analysis which is more closely tailored to archaeological objectives and archaeological data than are more "traditional" quantitative techniques such as nearest neighbor analysis. Heuristic methods, methods which make use of the problem context and which are guided in part by intuitively derived "rules," are discussed in general and with reference to the problem of spatial analysis in archaeology. A preliminary implementation of such a method is described and applied to artificial settlement data and artifact distributions from the Magdalenian camp of Pincevent. Finally, the prospects for further development of heuristic methods are elaborated.

Describing and comparing archaeological spatial structures

“…The efforts of Simek, Farizy, and Koetje are highly provocative but are impaired, I suggest, by the lack of a standard nomenclature for describing spatial structure. Indeed, the k-means clustering algorithm, termed by Kintigh and Ammerman (1982) a heuristic technique and used by Simek and in the analyses summarized by Koetje, is explicitly nonstandard, as it depends on the archaeologist to define "good" cluster solutions. Moreover, it can create only circular partitions and suffers from the other deficiencies of partitive methods noted above.…”

La chaîne opératoire a 70 ans : qu’en ont fait les préhistoriens français

“…Kintigh et A.J. Ammerman une méthode fondée sur la classification des coordonnées (Kintigh et Ammerman 1982). D. Stapert applique sa méthode des Rings and Sectors à Pincevent et Verberie (Stapert 1990;.…”

Metodologías de prospección a escala regional y artefactual en la comarca. La prospección del "Ager Segisamonensis"; comarca Odra-Pisuerga (Burgos)

“…análisis espacial básico (Kintigh et al 1982;Djindjian 1999;Blankholm 1991) de las dispersiones de material mediante técnicas adoptadas por la arqueología espacial para valorar el grado de agrupación de diversos tipos de materiales y su relación con la morfología original del yacimiento o su grado de arrasamiento. extensión de la densidad de material recogida en la primera prospección de la zona.…”