Assessing the state of archaeological GIS research: Unbinding analyses of past landscapes
Abstract
The early pioneers of archaeological Geographic Information Systems (GIS) advocated for a future where this technology was more than a data-management tool. To this end, they emphasized harnessing the analytic power of GIS to advance innovative understandings of past social landscapes. This paper introduces the special issue, explaining its aims to offer a current assessment of how this vision has been realized. Three themes related to both persistent questions and emergent horizons in archaeological GIS are explored in the context of the contributions. We present our own set of ideas for how to unbind our analyses from some of the methodological and conceptual constraints inherent in the analytic GIS approaches on which we have long relied to explore past landscapes. We argue it is important to keep moving beyond analytic approaches tethered to discrete points, to push forward geospatial modeling of cultural processes across entire landscapes, and to incorporate uncertainty and iteration directly into our work. Through such efforts, we can develop robust insights into the ways past communities considered, reconfigured, and renewed patterns of social, economic, and ideological interaction, flow, and circulation through the variegated landscapes they inhabited. In doing this, we will get closer to realizing the ambitious vision early pioneers had for archaeological GIS – a technology they believed could let us ask entirely new questions about the past.
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- Authors
- Howey, M. C. L., & Brouwer Burg, M.
- Affiliations
- University of New Hampshire (US)
- Corresponding author
- Howey, Meghan C.L.
- Venue
- Journal of Archaeological Science
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2017-08
- Volume
- 84
- Pages
- 1-9
- ISSN
- 0305-4403 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2614757222
- Semantic Scholar
- b3683ee779ae449734ded15a1cb980985990c82e
- Cited by
- 85
- References
- 67
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 15 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 13 · 2019: 11 · 2018: 11
- FWCI
- 20.94
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Archaeological Science (publishedVersion)
- University of New Hampshire Scholars Repository (University of New Hampshire at Manchester) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- American Council of Learned Societies
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Space and Planetary Science › Archaeological Research and Protection
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Archeology › Archaeological and Geological Studies
- Social Sciences › Anthropology › Historical and Cultural Archaeology Studies
- Keywords
- archaeological GIS, past landscapes, social landscape, geospatial modeling, cultural processes, uncertainty, iterative analysis, landscape archaeology
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