Least Cost Path Analysis

The aim of this study is to establish different socio-cultural models based on lithic raw material sourcing integrated with regional rock art distributions to infer social behaviours within the context of central Iberian Upper Palaeolithic societies. Specifically, we focus on Upper Palaeolithic hunter-gatherer mobility and social interaction in the Coa Valley. This study relies on a knowledge of regional geology and field work to identify the sources of the lithic raw material found at Coa Valley Upper Palaeolithic sites. We expose the context of use and discard of exotic flint, which is naturally absent from the region, and other local materials. From this, we present a GIS based analysis concerning space, time and least-cost paths travelled. This analysis, along with the environmental data available, forms a baseline to evaluate different anthropological models on hunter-gatherer lithic use, mobility, and social networks. We conclude with a three-level model for social interaction, in the context of aggregation activities between different social meta-groups, which involves embedded procurement, long-distance raw material exchange, and symbolic community, reflected in the largest known open-air Upper Palaeolithic rock art concentration.

The seaways have played a significant role in the movement of people, goods and ideologies since prehistory; yet, the ephemerality of movement combined with the paucity of direct evidence for prehistoric seafaring has challenged more refined understandings of the role of early seafaring in anthropogeny. Advances in digital methodologies within archaeology, such as least-cost approaches, allow more nuanced models of movement to be generated but suffer from dichotomous approaches to land and sea. These disentangled land-sea perspectives have long been criticised as ineffectual for understanding past maritime cultures, and previous discussions of prehistoric seafaring more specifically have advocated the consideration of the unique character of maritime space in order to more closely actuate a seafarer’s perspective. Drawing on these ideas, this paper argues that more nuanced approaches to past seafaring are not only necessary but also achievable through holistic perspectives, heuristic methods and scaled-down resolutions, which allow for a more contextualised understanding of the spatiality and temporality—i.e. the human-scale—of maritime movement. This will be demonstrated through an integrated land-sea least-cost method to model Neolithic seafaring around the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. It is not the intention of this paper to advocate solely for the methodology outlined here but rather to demonstrate the need to consider and understand the unique character of maritime space and its many influences on the practices being studied. Only through such contextualised cognition can the perspectives and ideologies of past seafarers and the role of seafaring in anthropogeny truly be understood.

To evaluate a model of the travel-route selection process for upper Ohio Valley Paleoindian foragers (13,500–11,400 cal BP),
this study investigates archaeological data through the theoretical framework of landscape learning and risk-sensitive analysis.
Following initial trail placement adjacent to a highly visible escarpment landform, Paleoindians adopted a risk-averse strategy
to minimize travel outcome variability when wayfaring between Sandy Springs, a significant Ohio River Paleoindian site, and
Upper Mercer–Vanport chert quarries of east-central Ohio. Although a least-cost analysis indicates an optimal route through
the lower Scioto Valley, archaeological evidence for this path is lacking. Geomorphic and archaeological data further suggest
that site absence in the lower Scioto Valley is not entirely due to sampling bias. Instead, evidence indicates that Paleoindians
preferred travel within the Ohio Brush Creek–Baker’s Fork valley despite its longer path distance through more rugged, constricted
terrain. Potential travel through the lower Scioto Valley hypothesizes high outcome variability due to the stochastic
nature of the late Pleistocene hydroregime. In this case, perceived outcome variability appears more influential in determining
travel-route decisions among Paleoindians than direct efforts to reduce energy and time allocation.

A paper on reconstructing the links of past physical networks in GIS, based on archaeological site locations and mathematical models of few parameters.

Open access here:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10816-021-09529-3#Ack1

... and don't forget to check out the software:
https://github.com/benducke/v.net.models

Resharpening is considered to be a common technique for extending the use life of stone tools in certain prehistoric contexts. For Clovis peoples, the earliest well-documented North Americans, resharpening is believed to have been particularly important because foraging territories were unknown or poorly known. Gardner (1983, Archaeol. East. N. America 11, 49--64) proposed a spatial model of Clovis point resharpening wherein the effects of resharpening increase with distance from stone outcrop. Here we report a study that quantitatively assesses Gardner's model using a large sample of Clovis points from three high-quality chert sources in the Midwest. To investigate the predictions of the model, we used least-cost pathway distances from outcrop locations to each Clovis point and three measures of point resharpening. Our expectations, derived from the model, are that as distance from outcrop increases, points should show evidence of increased resharpening and therefore be smaller in size; should deviate from the classic shape; and should exhibit greater outer-to-inner flake-scar ratios. Our results indicate that there is no spatial patterning of these three measures of point resharpening and therefore do not support Gardner's model. Further analyses suggest that resharpening was not a significant source of Clovis-point variation on the population level and that Clovis points may not have served as the long-life tools as has been generally assumed.

The surrounding landscape of ancient Pergamon is characterized by several mountain ranges, the Bakırçay Valley and River and the Aegean coastline. The accessibility of this region was vital for the city since it provided food and resources as well as trade, communication and military movements, all facilitated by a well-developed route network. Despite the importance of roads for the development and prosperity of the city, the ancient route network is still widely unexplored and archeological evidence of roads is extremely rare. This study therefore aims to reconstruct the ancient route network in the surroundings of Pergamon by combining historical and archeological sources with modern computer-aided least-cost path analyses, while also considering changes in the landscape that have occurred since antiquity. Based on these detailed results, conclusions may be drawn about the characteristics and functional diversity of the routes. Although the investigation of the route network in the surroundings of Pergamon cannot be considered complete, the results of this study already offer a valuable basis for further research, analyses, modeling and field work.

During the ninth through twelfth centuries A.D., Ancestral Pueblo people constructed long, straight roads that interconnected the Chaco regional system across the San Juan Basin of northwestern New Mexico. The intent and use of these features has eluded archaeological consensus, although recent research has reiterated the occurrence of long distance timber importation to Chaco Canyon. To enhance our interpretation of these features we offer a large-scale least cost analysis wherein optimal pathways that are modeled to simulate timber importation are compared to the actual road locations. A series of least cost paths were produced through different energy allocation algorithms, at different spatial scales, and with various origin and destination inputs. Our results reveal a strong correlation between actual road locations and modeled pathways. Therefore, we suggest that certain Chaco roads may have been specifically designed to facilitate the importation of timbers and that roads, once constructed, were the optimal pathway for the import of these resources.

A persistent issue with the study of Late Bronze Age (ca. 1600-1100 BCE) chamber tombs in Mainland Greece remains our limited understanding of the factors that governed the choice of location for their construction. Mee and Cavanagh (1990) examined various parameters, such as religious beliefs, distance from settlement, the tombs' use as territorial markers or relation to roads. They remained, however, inconclusive. The present study revisits this theme, but focuses on one of the factors formerly discussed, that is the relation of the tombs' locations to roads. As the most extensive record of Mycenaean roads is preserved at the settlement of Mycenae in the Argolid and its hinterland, this site is considered to be the best case-study for analysis. In order to ascertain the significance of roads on the locations chosen for the chamber tombs, this paper builds a methodological approach that makes use of GIS-based mobility analysis and historical cartography. The analysis has shown that, at least at Mycenae, issues of accessibility to the tombs did not play as crucial role as the actual performance of rituals such as the funerary procession. It also sheds light on the form funerary processions probably took at Mycenae and on common notions of wheeled traffic use for the transfer of the dead to their tomb.

This paper presents the results of the ‘Roman Barcino Water Network’ Project. This study employed a series of methodologies aiming at joining and interpreting all data available on water supply, distribution, management, use and discharge in the Roman colony of Barcino (modern Barcelona). Analyses of the results substantially modified previous knowledge of Barcino’s water organization and provided one of the few examples in which the whole water system of a Roman city has been tackled. We concluded that the water supply employed a single aqueduct, which divided before entering the city and not two of them as it was previously assumed. Barcino’s water distribution system was designed according to the different uses of water and was conditioned by the city’s particular topography. The results also stress the colony’s ample water availability, which despite its small size, allowed the maintenance of multiple public and private baths as befitted an accommodated population of merchants and administrators.

As archaeologists expand the accessibility of legacy data, they have an opportunity to use these datasets to design future research. We argue that legacy data can be a critical resource to help predict characteristics of sites and socioeconomic systems. In this article, we present a combined geographic information system (GIS) and network analysis methodology that turns site location data into testable hypotheses about site characteristics and the organization of regional settlement systems. We demonstrate the utility of this approach with a case study: Bronze Age (2700-1100 BC) settlement patterns in the mining region of Hunedoara in southwest Transylvania, Romania. We leverage unsystematically collected site location information in legacy datasets to develop testable predictions about sites, regional networks, and socioeconomic systems that can be evaluated through future systematic surveys and large-scale excavations. Such testable hypotheses can inform archaeological research design by providing a quantitative basis for determining where to focus research efforts and can also help secure funding and fieldwork permits. The method developed here can be applied in diverse archaeological contexts to reinvigorate legacy data as part of future archaeological research design.

In this work, we present a routing approach avoiding relatively dangerous areas within a city. The information of how dangerous some urban areas are is derived using volunteered geographic information (VGI), governmental open data for detecting properties and functionalities of the urban infrastructure and historical crime data from police departments for detecting crime hot spots. Therefore, we present the basics of crime mapping and analysis with GIS, the practical use of VGI for routing and describe our contribution within the field of routing solutions. Afterwards, we explore our test data in detail. For the practical use, we simplify all the urban infrastructure information and propose a safety index, which represents the relative safety in the investigation area. Additionally, historical crime hot spots are detected and used as routing obstacles. The arcs in the road network are weighted by our safety index and the historical crime hot spots are introduced as obstacle polygons. We test our safetyaware routing design on Los Angeles (LA) and assume its use during night times. In this regard, from two relatively far away situated origin and destination points, we calculate the least dangerous path and compare it with the calculated shortest path. Vehicle drivers without knowledge about the dangerous areas in the city may use the least dangerous path, which is based on our calculated safety index. Finally, we discuss the effectiveness of our method and consider further extensions using freely available geodata.

In the Gallina district, it is still unclear whether the violence originated with domestic (i.e. local) or foreign agents. This analysis will begin with a brief review of the relevant archaeology of the Gallina area. Following this, I set out to understand who the aggressors might be in this region by employing macroregional spatial analyses in two different case studies. Spatial analysis is ideal for understanding the source of violence in a region. For one, it is applicable at various scales. This is especially important in determining violence between local groups versus violence across a regional landscape. It is only by understanding the spatial patterns of violence that researchers can comprehensively demonstrate the difference between local versus regional, internal versus external patterns.

Cost-surface and least-cost path analyses are widely used tools to understand the ways in which movement relates and engages with the surrounding space. They are employed in research fields as diverse as the analysis of travel corridors, land accessibility, site locations, maritime pathways, animal seascape connectivity, transportation, search and rescue operations. This work describes the ‘movecost’ package, designed for the free R statistical environment, which provides the facility to produce, in a relatively straightforward way, various accumulated slope-dependent cost surfaces and least-cost outputs from different models of movement across the terrain. The package motivation and significance are described, and the main software characteristics are outlined by means of an illustrative example.

Using a variety of quantitative approaches, interactions between prehistoric sites in the Göksu valley and south-central Anatolia are modelled within their wider multi-regional and diachronic socio-economic networks to assess the prominence and influence of communities in south-central Anatolia from the Late Chalcolithic to the end of the Early Bronze Age (c. 4200–2000 BC). Since the 1950s, some have understood the valley as significant in terms of movement and communication through the Taurus mountain chain that divides the southern Anatolian plateau from the Mediterranean coast. This view is called in to question through the application of geospatial and computational methods, namely least cost pathway and social network analyses. Archaeologists use least cost pathway analysis to model movement in the past. Similarly, social network analysis is used to model contact and interaction in the past. The approach adopted in this paper seeks to combine the two methods to investigate social structure and the nature of interaction in late prehistoric south-central Anatolia. The results suggest that views of the Göksu valley as the primary or a prominent means of connecting the southern Anatolian plateau and the Mediterranean coast may need to be reassessed.Göksu vadisindeki prehistorik yerleşimler ve güney Anadolu'nun orta kısımları arasındaki etkileşim farklı ölçüm yöntemleri kullanılarak değerlendirilmiş ve Geç Kalkolitik dönemden Erken Tunç Çağı'nın sonuna kadar (yaklaşık M.Ö. 4200–2000) çok bölgeli ve art zamanlı sosyo-ekonomik bir ağ içinde modellendirilmiştir. 1950'lerden bu yana pek çok araştırmacı güney Anadolu platosunu Akdeniz kıyılarından ayıran Toros dağları üzerindeki bu vadinin bölgesel hareket ve iletişim açısından önemli olduğu görüşünü kabul etmişlerdir. Bu görüş, jeo uzamsal ölçü araçları ve bilişimsel metotlarla, yani en düşük maliyetli yollar ve sosyal ağ analizleri uygulaması aracılığıyla sorgulanmaktadır. Arkeologlar geçmişteki hareketi modellemek için en düşük maliyetli yol analizi metodunu kullanırlar. Benzer şekilde, geçmişteki iletişim ve etkileşimi modellemek için de sosyal ağ analizi kullanılır. Bu çalışmada benimsenen yaklaşım, geç prehistorik dönemde güney Anadolu'nun orta kısımlarındaki sosyal yapıyı ve etkileşimin doğasını araştırmak için bu iki yöntemi birleştirmektir. Sonuçlar, güney Anadolu platosunu Akdeniz kıyılarına bağlayan ve bariz bir biçimde başlıca ulaşım yolu olarak karşımıza çıkan Göksu Vadisi'nin yeniden değerlendirilmesi gerektiğini düşündürmektedir.

The physical and symbolic organisation of space in constructed environments both reflects and influences human action. With the case study of Matakawau Paa (Tl0/169), Ahuahu (Stingray Point Paa, Great Mercury Island), New Zealand, I analyse a terrestrial laser scan point cloud to address how archaeological feature morphologies and spatial
relationships reflect spatial logics of the last inhabitants of this Maaori headland paa (fortified or defended place). Feature shape and location in relation to other features,
slope and aspect are considered, along with a least cost path analysis of likely routes of movement between features. Materialised ideologies relating to social hierarchy are argued to be apparent in the orientation and shape of the constructed features, a platform and adjacent terraces. Boundaries and pathways within the paa confined and redirected movement laterally to open communal areas.

In the last thirty years we have seen several theories about the function of megalithic monuments and their relationship with landscape elements such as roads and droveways. Although the transhumant tradition its droveways have been recorded first in the Middle ages, field observations have remarked the coincidence between the layout of these path and megalithic monuments. Several authors have suggested that the droveways were traced taking into account several natural variables and optimizing the relationship between terrain and time crossing, energy consumption, resources disponibility (like water) and other social factors. This paper investigates the possible relationship between megalithic monuments and droveways in the municipality of Almadén de la Plata (Sevilla, Spain). By using Geographic Information System and statistical methods we have studied the correlation between these archaeological elements and we have carried out two mobility experiments comparing droveways and optimal routes.

Each model of past movement based on the historical and archaeological evidence nowadays relies implicitly or explicitly on a cost function estimating costs of movement in terms of time, calories or some other currency for the study area and period of time considered. Cost functions are the basis of two popular GIS-based areas of spatial analysis in archaeology: site catchments and least-cost paths. A site catchment is the region accessible from a site, and often archaeological studies analyse the resources within this region. A least-cost path (LCP) is the route minimizing the costs of movement between two given locations. In archaeological studies, the aim of LCP calculations is often to reconstruct ancient routes or a route network or to identify the principal factors governing the construction of known roads or road segments. For generating a site catchment, GIS programs compute an accumulated cost surface (ACS). This is also the first step for LCP generation, therefore the Dijkstra algorithm implemented in most GIS programs for this purpose is outlined. The cost function applied for calculating the ACS typically depends on slope, soil type, vegetation cover or the presence of streams. Several slope-dependent cost functions and a list of terrain factors are presented. Moreover, issues with least-cost applications are discussed, including barrier implementation, restricted number of possible movement directions, and the calculation of slope-based costs for a path taken in one or two directions. The aim of the case study is to compare the site catchments of a Roman farm and a temple at different scales based on a cost model derived from Roman roads that were recorded in three publications. The concluding section discusses validation and stability of the outcomes of the methods presented and some additional issues such as modelling movement beyond walking. Finally, some other cost function based approaches are outlined.

Se propone un estudio de dos formas tradicionales de entender la relación del megalito con el paisaje, como son la movilidad natural por el territorio y la visibilidad del monumento con respecto al paisaje en el que se emplaza. Para ello, se aplican una serie de análisis fundamentados en los Sistemas de Información Geográfica y la Estadística Espacial sobre el conjunto tumular del Monte de Santa Mariña (Comarca de Sarria, Lugo) y su entorno (NO de la Península Ibérica). Partiendo de la creación de un modelo de simulación de desplazamiento natural y del estudio de la visibilidad de dicho conjunto, se comprueba, en primer lugar, la importancia de las vías potenciales de tránsito como variable locacional, así como el impacto visual que los monumentos juegan en relación con estas vías. A continuación, se analiza la prominencia visual de los túmulos megalíticos con respecto a su entorno inmediato, pudiéndose identificar la existencia de tendencias comunes en los distintos conjuntos tumulares en relación con el tamaño de las cuencas visuales. Los resultados sugieren una importante relación entre los túmulos y el tránsito natural por el territorio, si bien se detectan tendencias desiguales en lo que al impacto visual del megalito se refiere, tanto con respecto a la relación con otros túmulos como a la totalidad del territorio en el que se emplazan. Ello permite establecer un punto de partida necesario para la revisión de los planteamientos teóricos formulados para el conjunto de Galicia.

Islands and archipelagos have long fascinated humankind. Often viewed as bounded and isolated, given the right conditions and technology, their true nature may be far more complex. Such is case with the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, where a robust Neolithic archaeological record evidences varying degrees of movement that would have transcended not only a range of temporal and spatial scales but also environments. As movement itself leaves little archaeological trace, exploring the connectivity of these complex island communities requires innovative methodologies that can cope with the transience of movement as well as its different milieus. Using a least-cost approach, established for terrestrial movement and adapted to seafaring, a more holistic digital analysis was developed that allowed for movement to be modelled through both milieus and connected within the maritime landscape. Whilst the modelled pathways highlight the varying trajectories of Neolithic movement that would have occurred in response to a geographically and temporally constrained environment, they conversely reveal a strong continuity of practice and significance of place that together would have engendered complex patterns of mobility and social connectivity within the Outer Hebrides and beyond.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and remote sensing, archaeology, and ethnohistory are used to study the Cuzco to Vilcashuaman portion of the Chinchaysuyu Inka Road. The purpose of this analysis is to determine whether the Chinchaysuyu road from Cuzco to Vilcashuaman was built following the economic principles of Least Cost Path Analysis (LCA) or if it was built to accommodate locations of cultural significance. Drawing on the criteria presented by Rademaker et al. 2012; White (2012); and Howey (2007), I created several LCAs in order to find the most predictive Least Cost Path (LCP). Research has led me to believe that the location of Inka roads was influenced by factors that cannot be well modeled by a LCA constrained to solely the ecological factors of the environment because of cultural and historical particularities associated with the construction of the Inka road system according to the need of the imperial hegemonic administration. By researching this road, I wish to examine the larger role of the Inka road system as a communication infrastructure vital to maintaining and expanding the imperial hegemonic administration of the Inka Empire over a vast track of the Andes. Ultimately, I hope the multivariate LCAs I created in this thesis will further the assessment of LCA as a suitable method of locating ancient routes.

Résumé

Parmi les manifestations culturelles de l’Occident du Mexique, la tradition Teuchitlán est l’une des plus anciennes, ses débuts remontant à la période Préclassique (1000 av. J.-C. à 200 apr. J.-C.). Son extension régionale et son organisation dans l’espace ont permis de mettre en place des méthodes d’analyse spatiale au moyen de Systèmes d’Information Géographiques (SIG). L’objectif de ce travail est de présenter un panorama général des dynamiques de mobilité et du probable réseau de chemins qui sillonnait le paysage de la Vallée de Tequila (état du Jalisco, Mexique). Pour ce faire, nous avons utilisé des outils propres aux Systèmes d’Information Géographiques. Notre travail s’est centré sur la recherche de chemins de moindre coût (least-cost path, LCP), en nous appuyant sur les images satellites et les Modèles Numériques de Terrain (MNT). Cette étude fournit des informations sur la façon dont les habitants de la tradition Teuchitlán cohabitaient avec l’espace qu’ils occupaient, grâce à leurs voies de circulation.
Mots clés : Système d’Information Géographiques, analyse spatiale, chemin le plus court, coût de surface.

Abstract
The Teuchitlán people are one of the oldest known cultures in western Mexico and their beginnings date back to the Preclassic period (400 B.C.E. to 200 C.E.). This civilisation was regional in size, and its societal structure allowed for the implementation of spatial analysis with the use of Geographical Information Systems. The aim of this paper is to give a panoramic regional view of movements, and the possible network of paths that stretched across the landscape of the Tequila Valley, in the region of Jalisco, Mexico. To this end, GIS systems were used. Our work centred upon the search for LCPs (least-cost paths) with the help of satellite imaging and digital elevation models. This study demonstrates that the Teuchitlán people interacted with their environment through the means of a network of paths.
Key Words: GIS, spatial analysis, least-cost paths, landscape archaeology.

The issue of emergent social complexity has long been debated in the anthropological literature. In the eastern Mediterranean context, the archaeological discussions of social complexity focused largely on societies that showed centralized administration, hierarchic social formations, and large urban centers in temperate parts of the region. For the marginal landscapes in the eastern Mediterranean, such as semi-desert regions, scholars have long denied social complexity on the basis of lack of attributes listed in traditional frameworks of complexity. Recently however, alternate models of complexity have been developed for tribal societies following heterarchy and corporate mode of complexity. In these models, the concepts of group fusion (i.e., cooperation) and fission (i.e., competition) have significant roles and they need to be examined in more detail, especially about how we can identify these group dynamics in the archaeological record, specifically in the settlement systems.
This article focuses on the Early Bronze I-III (ca. 3,500-2,400 BC) and the Iron Age (ca. 1,200-500 BC) of the Wadi el-Hasa, in west-central Jordan, for the evolution of settlement systems as a result of tribal cooperation/competition strategies and the emergence of long-distance trade, which allowed tribes not only to thrive economically but also gain political significance in a marginal landscape in the southern Levant. The use of relatively new analytical methods in archaeology, such as the geographical information systems, for assessing temporal changes in spatial distribution of sites, identifying trade routes, determining the impacts of long-distance trade and other socio-political events in the region on the settlement systems of the Hasa has been discussed.

The movement of past peoples in the landscape has been studied extensively through the use of Least Cost Path (LCP) analysis. Although methodological issues of applying LCP analysis in Archaeology have frequently been discussed, the effect of vertical error in the DEM on LCP results has not been fully assessed. This research proposes the use of Monte Carlo simulation as a method for incorporating and propagating the effects of vertical error on LCP results. Random error fields representing the vertical error of the DEM are calculated and incorporated into the documented and reproducible LCP modelling process using the R package leastcostpath. By incorporating vertical error into the LCP modelling process the accuracy of the LCP results can be understood probabilistically, with the likelihood of obtaining an LCP result quantified. Furthermore, the effect of incorporating vertical error on the LCP results can be expressed through the use of probabilistic LCPs, allowing for a graphical representation of the uncertainty in the LCP calculation, as well as identifying the most probable location of the 'true' least cost path. The method of understanding LCP results probabilistically is applied to a Roman road case study, finding that the accuracy of the LCP from south-to-north without incorporating vertical error is not representative of the LCP population with vertical error accounted for. In contrast, the accuracy of the LCP without incorporating PEER COMMUNITY IN ARCHAEOLOGY 2 vertical error from north-to-south is representative of the LCP population. The use of probabilistic LCPs suggests that the location of the Roman road in the southern section of the study area was selected to minimise the time taken to move up and down slope, irrespective of the direction of movement. However, the identification of two corridors of similar likelihood of containing the 'true' location of the LCP in the northern section when modelling movement south-to-north suggests that the input data and parameters used in the LCP analysis are unable to discern which corridor contains the most probable 'true' location of the LCP. Therefore, this research suggests that different input data and parameters are used and tested.

The graph model is used widely for representing connected objects within a specific area. These objects are defined as nodes; where the connection is represented as arc called edges. The shortest path between two nodes is one of the most focus researchers' attentions. Many algorithms are developed with different structured approach for reducing the shortest path cost. The most widely used algorithm is Dijkstra algorithm. This algorithm has been represented with various structural developments in order to reduce the shortest path cost. This paper highlights the idea of using a storage medium to store the solution path from Dijkstra algorithm, then, uses it to find the implicit path in an ideal time cost. The performance of Dijkstra algorithm using an appropriate data structure is improved. Our results emphasize that the searching time through the given data structure is reduced within different graphs models.

Abstract - Hunter-gatherer mobility in the Allerød has long been suspected to be fundamentally different from preceding and following periods due to the development of forested vegetation following the Allerød warming. Now, new primary data
from a recently excavated, well-preserved Federmesser site in Wesseling can contribute to this question. An in depth analysis of the raw material use and spatial organisation of Wesseling including operational chain reconstruction, refittings, least cost analysis and statistical evaluation in comparison with other Federmesser assemblages can shed light on the mobility patterns of the Rhenish Allerød hunters. The results indicate a residential mobility pattern focused on an embedded procurement of the closest sources of raw material in a radius of roughly 100 km around the sites. In the case of Wesseling the potential route of raw material acquisition could be reconstructed to have led from the end-moraines at Krefeld, over Aachen and BonnMuffendorf to Wesseling. The comparison of contemporary Rhenish inventories furthermore hints at the presence of different regional systems oriented along the major drainages and topographic features as of yet insufficiently understood.

Zusammenfassung - Die Mobilität allerød-zeitlicher Jäger und Sammler wird seit längerem in der Literatur als grundsätzlich unterschiedlich von den vorherigen und folgenden Perioden eingeschätzt. Die allerød-zeitliche Wiederbewaldung wird als hauptverantwortlicher Faktor für eine opportunistische Ressourcenausbeutung und eine geringere Gruppengröße der federmesserzeitlichen Jäger und Sammler genannt. Nun können neue Primärdaten aus dem kürzlich untersuchten, gut erhaltenen Federmesserfundplatz Wesseling dieses Bild unterstützen und präzisieren. Eine detaillierte Untersuchung der Mengen und Gewichtsprozentanteile, der erhaltenen Operationskettenstadien der verschiedenen Rohmaterialien, sowie der Gerätenutzung in Wesseling erbringen klare Anzeichen für eine Rekonstruktion der Wanderroute von den Endmoränen in Krefeld, über Aachen und Bonn-Muffendorf nach Wesseling. Weiterhin zeigt die Auswertung der Flächenorganisation des Fundplatzes klare, funktional getrennte Aktivitätszonen mit unterschiedlicher Rohmaterialkomposition auf, welche das Bild der Besiedlungsereignisse an diesem Fundplatz präzisieren. Im fundstellenübergreifenden Vergleich ist eine klare Nord-Süd Dependenz der genutzten Rohmaterialien statistisch nachweisbar, welche das vermutete Bild der eingebetteten Rohmaterialbeschaffung unterstützt und das Einzugsgebiet der Fundplätze auf einen etwa 100 km Radius beschränkt. Weiterhin zeigt der Datensatz Hinweise auf bisher unzureichend verstandene, regionale Untersysteme, welche sich an den primären Entwässerungssystemen sowie an den wichtigsten topografischen Einheiten
im Untersuchungsgebiet orientieren.

The increasing sophistication and complexity of archaeological models has precluded easy testing of such models, and oftentimes requires assessments that can be as lengthy and complicated as the initial model design and execution. Here, a multi-criteria decision-based model developed to simulate hunter-gatherer land use decisions in the Post-Glacial Netherlands is discussed. To approximate when and where uncertainty occurs, a sensitivity analysis is implemented that involves varying input parameter weights to determine those parameters with the greatest potential impact on model output. This process incorporates linked combinations of statistical and qualitative tests that are unique to each stage of the modeling. While the sensitivity analysis described allows modellers to become better acquainted with both their models and data – and the inherent limitations that lie therein – the utility of such a heuristic exercise is debatable. Thus, another approach is proposed that involves running two spatial analyses that target the same question of human land use decision-making from different directions and harnessing different data. This procedure has the ability to provide archaeological modellers with a better approximation of the robustness of each spatial analysis, especially when the two analyses converge upon similar answers. When the spatial analyses do not produce similarly patterned results, we know it is time to go " back to the drawing board " and reassess the meta-issue of whether the questions we are asking can be answered via our modeling abstractions. These issues are of no small import because if archaeological models are to resonate with researchers conducting similar simulative and decision-based models in other fields, then we must implement comparable post-process tests in our models too.