Using multi-criteria cost surface analysis to explore past regional landscapes: a case study of ritual activity and social interaction in Michigan,AD 1200–1600

Major advances have occurred in the analytical use of GIS in archaeology, particularly in uses of this tool for furthering understandings of past social landscapes. A major focus of these efforts has been visibility studies and archaeologists have paid less attention to how GIS can facilitate the study of another important socio-spatial component, movement. This paper examines the GIS application of multi-criteria cost surface analysis as a robust technique for modeling past movement and applies this approach to the Late Prehistoric period (ca. AD 1200–1600) in Michigan as a case study. This analysis extends understandings of the role of localized connections and tribal territoriality with the spread of maize agriculture in this period and adds further support to the proposal that earthwork enclosures served as uniquely accessible ritual centers for social, economic and ideological interaction between separate tribal communities within the Late Prehistoric regional organization. By showing this technique can build on and validate models of past social developments, grant real insights into social connections and affiliations, and stimulate new directions for future research, this specific case illustrates the general heuristic value of multi-criteria cost surface analysis for exploring regional landscapes in archaeology.     

Geographic Visualization in Archaeology

Archaeologists are often considered frontrunners in employing spatial approaches within the social sciences and humanities, including geospatial technologies such as geographic information systems (GIS) that are now routinely used in archaeology. Since the late 1980s, GIS has mainly been used to support data collection and management as well as spatial analysis and modeling. While fruitful, these efforts have arguably neglected the potential contribution of advanced visualization methods to the generation of broader archaeological knowledge. This paper reviews the use of GIS in archaeology from a geographic visualization (geovisual) perspective and examines how these methods can broaden the scope of archaeological research in an era of more user-friendly cyber-infrastructures. Like most computational databases, GIS do not easily support temporal data. This limitation is particularly problematic in archaeology because processes and events are best understood in space and time. To deal with such shortcomings in existing tools, archaeologists often end up having to reduce the diversity and complexity of archaeological phenomena. Recent developments in geographic visualization begin to address some of these issues and are pertinent in the globalized world as archaeologists amass vast new bodies of georeferenced information and work towards integrating them with traditional archaeological data. Greater effort in developing geovisualization and geovisual analytics appropriate for archaeological data can create opportunities to visualize, navigate, and assess different sources of information within the larger archaeological community, thus enhancing possibilities for collaborative research and new forms of critical inquiry.     

国外旅游线路空间模式研究进展

旅游线路空间模式实质上是游客在目的地区域对停留空间和消费空间的理性选择与线性组合,是具有典型空间属性的社会文化地理现象和经济地理现象,涉及了作为旅游景点和旅游目的地的点状地理要素和作为旅游线路的线状地理要素以及旅游目的地体系构成的区域等面状地理要素。从文献综述的角度对不同尺度旅游线路模式的空间模型、目的地类型、游客旅行行为特征、模式选择影响因素以及理论基础进行了总结,在此基础上结合国内研究对旅游线路模式今后的研究方向提出了建议。     

现代中国环境考古研究模式的分析

本文将1987年以来的中国环境考古研究称为"现代中国环境考古研究",并将之归纳为"考古地理的环境考古研究模式"、"文化历史环境考古研究模式"和"资源环境考古研究模式"。本文对这三种研究模式的合理性进行了分析。接下来,从考古学的基本理论假设出发,指出环境考古学、文化历史考古学之间并没有严格的继承关系,中国环境考古研究的最大问题是核心概念的不匹配。最后,通过考察西方环境考古研究和考古学史,本文提出应该用文化适应,即"考古学中的文化"取代考古学文化而将之作为核心概念进行环境考古研究,让中国环境考古摆脱文化历史考古学概念体系的束缚。     

The Archaeology of Immateriality

Despite changes in archaeological theory and practice over the past 40 years, most archaeologists are still not very good at acknowledging that “significance” is context-dependent and non-material. In this paper I present two cases studies from New England where archaeologists collaborated with Native peoples on sites that had significant preservation concerns. I evaluate to what extent these projects were successful in their goal of decolonizing archaeology. I call for a definition of materiality that acknowledges that tangible objects and their intangible contexts and meanings are inextricable, and that values are continuously created and recreated in the present by a variety of memory communities.     

Framing the past: situating the archaeological in photographs

Archaeology continually reproduces its own images. Speaking archaeology’s visual language is one way we prove membership in the discipline. Many aspects of this visual language have become so naturalized within archaeological representation as to be almost unquestionable: the cleaning of the site, the use of scale, and particular framings and perspectives. How, then, is the production of particular photographic images of archaeology related to the practice of archaeology? Does archaeology look a certain way (in photographs) or are archaeologists reproducing an archaeology according to the way it is thought it should look? Using examples of early photographs from Latin American archaeological expeditions, this article investigates not only photography as an applied technology for scientific recording, but also its power to situate archaeological knowledge. Drawing on recent reflective and critical developments in both the history of archaeology and visual anthropology, it uses five focal points – trace, objectivity and authenticity, sight/site, still lifes, and still lives – to argue that early-twentieth-century archaeological photographs of Latin America participated in the generation of an ‘authentic’ past rather than simply paid testament to it.     

Archaeology and Inka Origins

The recent proliferation of Andean archaeological research presents new interpretive opportunities for reconstructing different aspects of Inka origins. Early colonial historiography reveals that “Inka origins” refers to multiple aspects of the past, including the first appearance of Andean people, Inca ancestors, and the imperial title. The intellectual history of Inka archaeology demonstrates the lasting influence of Spanish colonial interpretive values, even with the gradual introduction of new scientific methods during the 20th century. Since 1970, significant advances in the archaeology of Cuzco, the Inka capital region, and other parts of the Andes have established an independent database that highlights the long-term and regional aspect of Inka origins, as well as areas where interpretive questions remain. The shift from colonial chronicles to archaeological data improves the accuracy of reconstructions of Inka origins, but it also raises some epistemological questions for the future relationships between history and archaeology in the study of ancient empires.     

Virtual Representation: the Production of 3D Digital Artifacts

As new digital technologies now pervade the discipline of archaeology, the practice of creating digital 3D representations of artifacts has become widespread. The rapid growth and acceptance of these technologies into the discipline leaves us in a position where we must engage with how these tools fit our epistemologies. I propose that we look to a much older technology, photography, to inform the way that these digital artifacts are dealt with as we move into an increasingly digital field. In doing so, I will argue that the creation of a 3D digital artifact is a productive process, just as any form of media used to document and interpret the archaeological record. Through this production, the digital form is decoupled from the original physical artifact. The creation of a new representation of the artifact (in the form of a photograph or digital model) provides a new dimension to our interactions with these artifacts. The result of the digital movement in archaeology is a more interactive experience with artifacts, allowing researchers and the public alike digital access to archaeological collections. If the current trend continues, digital artifact modeling will become as indispensable to archaeology as traditional photography. It is therefore necessary for archaeologists to be aware of the subjectivities and biases that exist during this productive act as we move into a more integrated field of digital, representational technologies.     

Imperial Intersections: Archaeologists, War and Violence—Comments

This is a commentary on a series of papers presented in the Imperial Intersections: archaeologists, war and violence session at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The session addressed issues surrounding archaeology, war and violence and the ethical responsibilities of archaeological practitioners. The papers in this volume have created more questions than answers, but as with all ethical scenarios, I was inspired to think and to examine critically aspects of archaeology that may have eluded past contemplation. In attempting to find commonalities and themes in the submissions I realized that almost every paper is concerned with the production of knowledge—how much access should there be; who should have access to knowledge; how should knowledge be disseminated; and when and if the knowledge should be reproduced. The central debate of “in whose best interest is this knowledge produced” is also explored in this review?     

The Archaeology of Regions: From Discrete Analytical Toolkit to Ubiquitous Spatial Perspective

In the 1970s and 1980s, regional analysis was an influential part of archaeological research, providing a discrete set of geographical tools inspired by a processual epistemological and interpretive perspective. With the advent of new technologies, new methods, and new paradigms, archaeological research on regional space has undergone significant changes. This article reviews the state of regional archaeology, beginning with a consideration of its history and a discussion of the fundamental issues facing regional investigations before focusing on developments over the last several years. On one hand, the diversification of archaeological theory has created new paradigms for thinking about human relationships with one another and with the physical environment across regional space; in this regard, historical ecology, landscape archaeology, and evolutionary theory have been particularly influential in recent years. This has led to a corresponding diversification of the traditional methods of regional analysis. Most notably, the advent of powerful digital technologies has introduced new tools, especially those from the geographic information sciences, that build on the quantitative methods of past approaches. The investigation of regional data is no longer based on a discrete toolkit of simple mathematical and graphical procedures for representing spatial relationships. Instead, regional archaeology has matured into a diversity of multiscalar spatial and geostatistical techniques that inform many areas of archaeological inquiry.     

Moving Towards Transformative Democratic Action Through Archaeology

Archaeologists have explored how politics affect the way we see the past. They have investigated how constructions of the past naturalize present political conditions, and have explored uses of the past in current politics. Few have examined how politics in archaeology can relate to the future. In this article I develop ideas on a transformational politics in archaeology that focuses on critiquing oppressive relations in the past and present, and works towards building more just relations for the future. I examine how we can achieve this through building more democratic relations in the places we work.     

Conceptualizing Urban Inequalities as a Complex Socio-Technical Phenomenon

The United Nations World Social Report (2020) reveals that more than two thirds of the world's population live in countries where urban inequalities have increased in the last three decades. While urban inequalities are traditionally characterized as an economic issue, scholars are increasingly applying methods from geospatial analysis to study them. In the context of these advancements, it remains unclear what underlying perspectives are guiding decisions to concentrate on certain aspects of urban inequalities, while potentially ignoring others. We address this gap by reviewing the literature centered on the geospatial analysis of urban inequalities and identify three predominant research lenses from accessibility, distribution, and policy and stakeholder perspectives. As a primary contribution of this article, we connect the perspectives with ideas drawn from complexity theory to develop an overarching socio-technical framework for how urban inequalities emerge over space and time. While traditional scientific frameworks seek to increase knowledge through causality, complexity science acknowledges the inherent challenges in defining, understanding and solving complex problems such as urban inequalities, which has profound implications for their representation, modeling and interpretation. We critically reflect on the framework through key relational themes and insights drawn from the literature and close with considerations for future research.     

Tracing Teams,Texts, and Topics: Applying Social Network Analysis to Understand Archaeological Knowledge Production at Çatalhöyük

Social network analysis (SNA) is an analytical technique rapidly gaining popularity within archaeology for its applicability to a wide variety of issues relating to past communities. Using the 20-year project at Çatalhöyük, Turkey, as a case study, I demonstrate how SNA can be helpfully used to understand knowledge production in archaeology. Balancing network visualization and computation with contextual knowledge, combining SNA with topic modeling, and concentrating on social structures all work to provide a diachronic view of how information flows between disparate research teams at Çatalhöyük as well as the social structures and specific individuals promoting this flow. SNA has the undeniable potential to provide new perspectives on how dispersed datasets are assembled to produce archaeological knowledge, illustrating the value of retaining focus on the social conditions of scientific practice even as significant insights are being derived from instead investigating objects and ontology.     

Integrating Archaeological Theory and Predictive Modeling: a Live Report from the Scene

Archaeological predictive modeling has been used successfully for over 20 years as a decision-making tool in cultural resources management. Its appreciation in academic circles however has been mixed because of its perceived theoretical poverty. In this paper, we discuss the issue of integrating current archaeological theoretical approaches and predictive modeling. We suggest a methodology for doing so based on cognitive archaeology, middle range theory, and paleoeconomic modeling. We also discuss the problems associated with testing predictive models.     

Cities in the modern world

SUMMARY: The archaeology of modern cities has grown enormously over the past half-century, driven in large part by developer-funded urban renewal. This activity has utilized a diverse array of methodological approaches, research paradigms and scales of analysis — a diversity increasingly reflected in the pages of Post-Medieval Archaeology. In this paper, we review the development of urban archaeology, with a particular focus on material remains from the past two or three centuries. We emphasize the role played by commercial archaeology and the growing importance of community engagement, along with changing theoretical models and the emergence of new analytical technologies.     

Snapshots of History and the Nature of the Archaeological Image

By its very definition, archaeology is situated at the intersection of the material and the temporal worlds. Photography is similarly positioned, and yet it can be manipulated to produce constructed contexts according a photographer’s agenda. In order to explore how the abilities and limitations of archaeology and photography are entwined I examine the representational power of the photograph and the phenomenon of Japanese tourist photography. I then discuss the construction of archaeological photographs, both in practice and in the prescribed theory contained archaeological methods textbooks, as well as how photographs are used to represent the embodied, physical performance of archaeology.     

WHAT I BELIEVE: DOING ARCHAEOLOGY AS A FEMINIST

I propose that a feminist approach will enrich archaeology in the Southeast and Midsouth. Feminist archaeology starts by taking the lives of women seriously in thinking about past human societies. This standpoint has implications for all topics of interest for Southeastern archaeologists: subsistence patterns, craft production, exchange, development of political systems, warfare, ritual, and so forth. Feminist archaeologists are also self-reflexive about and alert to conditions of work in the profession of archaeology. They pay attention to the importance of the intersection of gender, age, status, and other aspects of personal identity and to the need to accept ambiguity in interpretation. I review how a feminist archaeology might be applied to the archaeology of the South and what risks a feminist archaeology might raise.     

Imagining an Archaeology of the Future: Capitalism and Colonialism Past and Present

This paper explores how doing history backward may allow archaeologists to begin imagining an archaeology of the future. The purpose of such an archaeology would be two-fold: first, to examine the past from the vantage point of the present as a way of better understanding the past as precondition, and second, to critically examine the present with an eye toward imagining how archaeology might be able to influence the future. Drawing on case studies that offer windows on the growth of capitalist production and the continuing impacts of colonialism, this paper seeks to demonstrate the power of using archaeology to link past and present. By focusing on the ideological dimensions of processes such as commoditization and the erasure of indigenous histories I hope to highlight the value of doing history backward and its potential for constructing an archaeology of the future.     

How to Queer the Past Without Sex: Queer Theory, Feminisms and the Archaeology of Identity

A queer archaeology is often equated to looking for ancient homosexuality. As a challenge to heteronormative practice, queer theory, instead, provides a framework for engaging with all aspects of identity formation and the processes and behaviors that mediate it. This article examines two primary points: (1) queer theory’s relationship to feminist practice and archaeology and (2) its application to the construction and production of difference among ancient Maya commoners. Through this analysis, I explore how investigations of identity and status can and should be part of a queer analysis. Work at the Northeast Group, part of the site of Chan, Belize illustrates how focus on internal class composition, specifically change through time, “queers” traditional models of ancient Maya class formation.     

Archaeology and the Irish rediscovery of the Celtic past

This article examines the place of archaeology in the second wave of Irish cultural nationalism, and how archaeological findings were appropriated by rival ethno‐religious communities in Ireland. In particular, it focuses on George Petrie, who was the founder of ‘scientific’ archaeology and was also one of the leading figures in the nineteenth‐century Celtic revival that sought a moral regeneration of the Irish nation In Ireland, as elsewhere, archaeology was important in reconstructing an early history of the nation where few written records existed and in making this visible through material artefacts. However, archaeology was only significant as part of a wider cultural revival that presented artefacts and sites as national symbols to an island undergoing rapid social change. This article will explore the relationship between archaeology and this national revival, and how the material objects recovered by archaeologists extended and transformed the existing repertoires of how the nation was imagined and felt. It will assess the different reception of these images in the rival Catholic and Protestant communities. Finally, it will comment on the capacity of a medieval ‘Celtic’ repertoire to provide the basis of a dynamic modern Irish national culture.