In their 2014 article "A house with a view? Multi-modal
inference, visibility fields, and point process analysis of a Bronze Age
settlement on Leskernick Hill (Cornwall, UK)" (2014, Journal of
Archaeological Science 43, 267-277), Stuart Eve and Enrico Crema describe their
efforts to model Bronze Age sites using different sets of variables and
critique the way in which some researchers approach statistical modelling. Modelling, as the authors use the term,
involves performing spatial analyses on variables that potentially affected
site placement; a successful model would reveal correlations between variable
values and site placement. For example,
a model might propose that sites are more likely to be located at certain
elevations or in areas of a certain level of precipitation. Environmental variables such as elevation,
slope, aspect, land cover, rainfall, and distance to permanent water sources
are all common variables to consider when constructing a model for
analysis. Eve and Crema emphasize that
no model is "true"; there are only more or less successful
models. Even a successful model, showing
strong statistical correlation between variables and site placement, is not
guaranteed to be closer to true than other models. A wide range of variables and different
levels of analyses must be considered.
Eve and Crema investigate three proposed models for the
location of sites on Leskernick Hill.
The two models unique to their study involve line of sight
analyses. The first model proposed the
placement of sites to maintain line of sight with ritual sites in the area
while the second proposed a line of sight preference for tin deposits. The third model looked at the more standard
topographic and environmental variables.
The line of sight analyses were created by calculating the viewshed of
every raster cell coinciding with Leskernick Hill using GRASS GIS and Python
for batch processing.
The results indicate the need to consider difference scales
of analyses. While the first model (line
of sight with ritual sites) was the best match overall, sites in the western
portion of the study area fit the second model (line of sight to tin resource)
much better. Removing these western
sites also showed the southern sites fit the first model even better. The topographic inputs of the third model did
not fit site location very well.
Link to article (hopefully one that works this time):
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