Spatial analysis for the study of environmental settlement patterns: the archaeological sites of the Santa Cruz County

DANESE, M.; CASSIODORO G.; GOÑI, R.; GUICHON, F; LASAPONARA, R.; MASINI, N.; NOLÉ, G.

Frascati

Congreso; Advances in remote sensing for cultural heritage; 2015

Spatial analysis is very important in the study of settlement patterns in archaeological sites, because often it helps to discover hidden or however not clear settlements dynamics.The aim of this work is, in particular, to use spatial analysis to study relationships between environmental parameters and archaeological sites in the Santa Cruz County and to develop an analysis protocol that could reveal including and excluding factors, useful for the research and the discovery of new archaeological sites on the territory. Consequently, a model that considers interactions between sites and some parameters such as the elevation, the slope, the aspect, the landforms, the land use and the distances from rivers was constructed. Moreover a final sensibility map was produced, that is able to help the archaeologist to know, in every point in the space, how many and which are parameters that could increase the probability to find new archaeological sites and that are survey priorities on the study region.The analysis and the constructed model were applied on the case study of the archaeological sites of the Santa Cruz County