Modelling Bias and Environmental Preferences in Archaeological Spatial Analysis

Abstract

Point pattern analysis (PPA) has gained momentum in archaeological research that models large-scale distributions of sites and explanatory covariates. As such, there has been increased interest in the bias of archaeological distributions, which mostly have an impact due to modern land-use change. These interactions, however, have not yet been fully explored. In order to better understand archaeological point patterns as functions of explanatory covariates, we offer three different approaches: (i) environmental preference modelling of archaeological records in different chronological phases; (ii) a custom bias surface that represents the variability of the regional landscape; (iii) an R-package (rbias) allowing the generation of a fuzzified bias surface based on Open Street Map (OSM) data.