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The ability to collect and analyze spatially defined data is a core component of archaeological research. In recent years, the collection and manipulation of spatial data sets has become increasingly sophisticated and effective with the introduction of Global Positioning (GPS), computer-based mapping and Geographic Information System (GIS) hardware and software (see Kennedy 1996, Napton and Greathouse 1997: 212-215, 225-228). On the more immediate, and practical, level, the collection of precise positional information on archaeological sites, features and artifacts using GPS instruments is, hypothetically, made faster and more cost-effective (cf. Ladefoged, Graves, O’Connor and Chapin 1998). Further, collected data can then be up-loaded into computer-based software systems for mapping and simple statistical correlation analysis. The generation of quickly recorded, electronic spatial data is, potentially, both a time and money-saver in archaeological field projects, whether they are basic field inventories (involving survey and testing strategies) or major programs of archaeological research.
At the broadest (and more theoretical level) of research, spatial manipulation and analysis of complex, interrelated data sets involving multiple classes of data-archaeological, environmental, etc.-make possible sophisticated modeling of past cultural and physical landscapes. This latter research approach, landscape archaeology, is concerned with the comprehensive, analytical integration of a human (cultural) and natural ecosystem components within a well-defined geographic area (Brunswig 1996, Rossignol 1992). In applying the landscape approach, pre-modern landscapes are conceptualized within multiple, but interacting, “frames of reference” for archaeological and paleoenvironmental researchers, frames which include:
- physical landscapes, or sets of evolving land forms over time with their associated soils, eroding and expanding (alluviation, etc ) geomorphic features (streams, terraces, hills, etc);
- biological landscapes with their associated ecosystems of plant and animal communities that are distributed in varied, and often “patchy”, patterns across the physical landscapes; and
- archaeological landscapes or the synchronic and diachronic distribution of loci of past human activity across, and functionally defined by the characteristics of different elements of, associated physical and biological landscapes.
In 1998, this author, under contract to the U.S. Park Service’s National Center for Preservation Technology and Training undertook a preliminary field test and evaluation of emerging Global Position Systems technology for applications in archaeology. The results of that study, described below, suggest that there are a number of highly positive (and a few less positive) aspects to using GPS technology for assisting archaeologists in acquiring multiple data sets for archaeological research programs from the fundamental survey and inventory data collecting phase to providing large-scale spatial data bases for regional landscape models.