Spaces and species: archaeology, landscape ecology and spatial models in northern Patagonia

SCHEINSOHN, VIVIAN; S.D. MATTEUCCI

Before farming: the archaeology and anthropology of hunter-gatherers

Western Academic & Specialist Press Limited

Lugar: Liverpool; Año: 2004 vol. 1 p. 2 - 2

1476-4261

In the context of a project framed on ecological landscape archaeology, a predictive model of site location is constructed from broad patterns of hunter-gatherer ecology (Binford 2001) applied to the specific environmental characteristics of a sub-antarctic steppe-forest ecotone. Geographic Information System (GIS) technology and image processing are used to model the location of archaeological sites in Comarca Andina del Paralelo 42º (parallel 42° Andean region), northern Patagonia, Argentina. The model is tested against the spatial distribution of known archaeological sites, and shown to be a good predictor of site location. The methodology has wider application as ameans of minimising the cost of intensive field surveys in areas with poor archaeological visibility