Spatial analysis (Archaeology)

This book comprises twenty-three detailed chapters describing key spatial analytical techniques and their application to archaeology. As the title of the book suggests the focus is on methodology, and the chapters herein cover a range of techniques, both established and emerging. Although the emphasis is on practice-the how to do it-it is crucial to stress from the very start that underlying any application of these techniques must be the why we do it. Each chapter in the volume offers an introduction covering the background of that particular technique. Here we present some thoughts on the development of 'spatial archaeology' more generally and why we think it is fundamental to much of what we do as practicing archaeologists. We start by considering the centrality of space to everyday life and archaeology as a discipline, and open up this discussion further by laying out some of the relations that archaeological space finds itself entangled with, such as time, practice and representation. Following this, we offer a brief historical overview of the development of spatial analysis in archaeology. This explores the contribution of the early antiquarians, through the formulation and zenith of formal spatial techniques in the late 1950s to early 1980s, their fall from favour and then second coming in the 1990s due to the introduction of a range of spatial technologies, not least Geographic Information Systems (GIS). This is then followed by a consideration of why concepts of space and spatiality underlie much archaeological thought, what can be called 'spatial thinking' in archaeology, and how this relates to what is understood by 'spatial analysis'. The chapter concludes with a careful consideration of what it means to think spatially in order to foreground the goal of the volume as a whole, which is to make a positive contribution to the ongoing development of archaeological spatial literacy at a time of significant theoretical and methodological transformation. Being human embodies space and spatial relationships within a material world and just as this applied to people living in the past, so it applies to those of us concerned with trying to understand those past lives through their remaining material residues. Most, if not all, archaeological material has a spatial component and it is not surprising, therefore, that spatial thinking and spatial analysis has been a central archaeological endeavour since the beginnings of the discipline. While some other social sciences and humanities disciplines , particularly history, have claimed a fairly recent 'spatial turn'

This report shows how it is possible to collate Geographic Information Systems (GIS) data for historic settlement nucleation and dispersion with a range of data on environmental variables in order to investigate the relationships between them. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression model specification, selection and validation procedures, followed by further analysis using spatial regression methods, identified environmental variables that appear to have had the most significant influence on settlement organisation. The use of OLS and spatial regression and the innovative Relative Area Overlap (RAO) technique has enabled investigation of how relationships between key environmental variables and historic settlement organisation varied across England. Overall, the regression analyses indicate that far more of the variation in the measures of settlement organisation is not explained by the environmental variables than is explained by them. The results of the RAO analysis echo this conclusion. Using unsupervised classification, it has been possible to develop new, national-scale characterisations of historic settlement organisation and of key environmental variables. These new classifications of historic settlement organisation often broadly align with Brian Roberts and Stuart Wrathmell’s delineations of provinces, sub-provinces and local regions, but the cluster outlines and Roberts and Wrathmell’s boundaries diverge more often than they agree.

This German-Polish research project explores issues concerning the movements of the Slavic population which were related to the complex, multilayered and regionally varied
nature of Medieval land development processes in the provincia trans Oderam. The study is interdisciplinary and involves the fields of settlement archaeology, geoarchaeology, regional
history, historical geography and dendrochronology.
To this end, a comprehensive archaeological and geographical database was established within the framework of the Geographic Information System (GIS). Through the subsequent correlation of thematic maps processes of land development can be illustrated in the form of spatial analysis. In the course of territorial acquisition during the High Middle Ages existing Late Slavic settlement areas in many places were subject to systematic infrastructural annexation and settlement. The Slavic population was strongly integrated into these processes and, for the time being, was able to retain its own cultural identity. The process of concentration with respect to the establishment of permanent villages in the High and Late Middle Ages often resulted in the coexistence of old Slavic settlers and new settlers from the western territories of the German Empire; evidence also exists of ethnic separation within jointly occupied settlements. Nevertheless, as the joint settlement of towns and villages progressed, an acculturation of the various ethnic groups, such as Flemings, Frisians, Franks, Saxons and Slavs occurred leading to the emergence of a new and independent identity

This chapter introduces Boundary Line Type (BLT) mapping, a vector GIS based cross-culturally and diachronically comparative method, used for mapping the socio-spatial significance of urban built environments. This new research method is related to other methods currently used to study contemporary as well as historical urban built environments such as urban morphology, space syntax, and GIS based approaches. BLT mapping uses GIS technology in order to apply an ontology of formal boundary conceptualisations expressing the constitutive differences among the materially constructed subdivisions which shape built environments and are inhabited by urban society. This ontology resulted from a firm socio-spatial theoretical grounding (Vis in Sp Flows: Int J Urb ExtraUrb Stud 2(4): 15–29, 2013a; Vis 2013b; Vis in J Borderland Stud, forthcoming) and is here operationalised on the basis of contemporary, historical, historically reconstructed, and archaeological ground-level city plans of the historic city of Winchester (UK) and Chunchucmil (Classic Maya, Mexico). The research processes of data preparation and the analytical mapping of BLTs by identifying them in empirical data contexts are presented. This alerts the prospective user to the challenges and practical measures involved in using spatial datasets of different origin. The interpretive opportunities of the resultant formal redescription of the urban landscape and the potential of the BLT data structure for both advanced spatial analysis and visualisation is explained. Facilitating this interpretive and analytical mapping practice is expected to stimulate future research to systematically explore societyspace relations as manifest and developing in cities over time and in socioculturally contrasting urban traditions. Devising and conducting this methodology advances the qualitative GIS research agenda for the spatial humanities and social sciences by marrying theoretically informed ideational concepts to quantifiable empirical units of information.

Nowadays revitalization is often defined as a comprehensive effort including revalorization, restoration, reconstruction, modernization and actions aimed at the revival of a building, a district or a town devastated in different aspects, also the economic and social ones. The social aspect is among the most significant ones. In other words, there is no complete revitalization without solving social problems. The presented study discusses problems related to the broadly approached revitalization projects and their main directions of development, based on the example of Polish revitalization programmes of territorial self-governmental units. The first part of the paper presents the definitional aspects of revitalization taking into account social, economic, environmental, spatial, functional, cultural and technical dimensions. Moreover, the definition, structure and purpose of a revitalization programme was characterized. Next the primary objectives and current developmental directions of revitalization in Poland were discussed based on the selected applicable revitalization programmes. Today the main directions of revitalization processes in Poland cover: the reduction of poverty and social exclusion, supporting local business, cleaner environment activities, sustainable spatial and functional development, supporting technical infrastructures, promoting culture-based socioeconomic development.

The Murrumbidgee Province of the Riverine Plain is three million hectares in extent, covering an area roughly the size of Tasmania. It is greater in size than the total area of protected heritage conservation land in the United Kingdom and only slightly less than the total area of protected heritage conservation land in New South Wales. As part of the 7 million hectare Riverine Plain, the Murrumbidgee Province shares 27,000 hectares of protected land. On archaeological grounds alone, protected areas in the Murrumbidgee Province warrant being increased to the proportion found throughout the rest of New South Wales.
A total of 918 sites were used in an analysis of the nature and distribution of sites in the Murrumbidgee Province. 307 archaeological sites and other features are held on the Sites Register of NP&WS. 347 sites (including more than 600 separate features) were added to this information during fieldwork in the present study. Other data were added from previous studies.
On the basis of the distribution of known sites and their location, we estimate that the Murrumbidgee Province contains more than 92,000 sites or features. Mounds, scarred trees, burials and open sites with stone tools are the most commonly encountered sites in the area.
A predictive map has been developed as part of this project. The map may be used with Arc View, a standard Geographic Information Systems (GIS) program used by many land managers. The map shows the likelihood of site occurrence throughout the study area. This map will prove valuable as a completely public document containing no confidential sites information. Recommendations on site conservation include checking actions such as unrestrained laser-levelling of large paddocks and old timber felling on river channel frontage without inspection for potential damage to places of significance to Aboriginal People. Damage to Aboriginal sites destroys these cultural assets and damages the right of Aboriginal people to access and enjoy their heritage.

"The present work aims to research the main factors which influence in the location
of megalithic monuments of Roncal and Salazar´s valleys. From the theoretical framework of
Spatial and Landscape Archeology, through the design and implementation of Geographical
Information Systems (GIS) as a methodological tool, we could analyze and define different
patterns in the spatial location of megalithic tombs."

By c. 3000 BCE, in the late Neolithic, there had been a significant change in the way people materialized their cosmology across Scotland with the introduction of free-standing stones that continued to be erected almost until the end of the Bronze Age (Burl, 1993, 2000). Significantly, a series of astronomical patternings have been empirically verified for many Bronze Age monuments that were erected in the latter Bronze Age (Higginbottom et al., 2000, 2001, 2015). Further, two series of complex landscape patternings associated with the monuments and their orientations have been identified (Higginbottom et al., 2015; Higginbottom and Clay, in press). However, when and where these patterns were first associated with standing-stone structures was unknown. Through innovative statistics and software we show that visible astronomical-landscape variables found at BronzeAge sites on the
inner isles and mainland of western Scotland were actually first established in stone nearly two millennia earlier, likely with the erection of two of the earliest dated British 'great circles': Callanish on the Isle of Lewis and Stenness on the Isle of Orkney. In particular,we introduce our new statistical test that enables the quantitative determination of astronomical connections of stone circles. It is seen that whilst different standing-stone monuments were created over time (Burl, 1993, 2000; Higginbottom et al., 2015) with a mixture of landscape variables (Higginbottom et al., 2015), we nevertheless see that highly relevant landscape markers and other aspects remained unchanged through these years. This suggests that there is some continuity of this cosmological system through time, despite the various radical material and social changes that occurred from the late Neolithic to the Late Bronze Age (Lynch, 2000; Mullin, 2001; Owoc, 2001).
https://www.altmetric.com/details/10434023#score
Co-author: Roger Clay

© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

For copy of early draft paper see pre-print server:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1402.1338v2.pdf
LINK to pre-print article under file drop down menu in full document view (click on heading of this article if still on my main academia.edu page).

This early draft has half the explanatory text of the methodology of our JAS Reports paper. It is a condensed piece in a form similar to a Nature paper with supplementary text containing some explanations; please feel free to contact for more information.

Around 1500 years ago, the Coast Salish peoples of southwestern British Columbia began to inter their dead within funerary petroforms. These burials, consisting of patterned arrangements of stone and soil built over the dead, marked a dramatic transition from below ground burials within the village, to above ground cemeteries located around village peripheries. This upward and outward movement of the dead is exemplified at the Rocky Point Peninsula on the southernmost tip of Vancouver Island. It is one of the largest mortuary landscapes on the Northwest Coast of North America, with 515 visible funerary petroforms distributed within and between two large neighbouring cemeteries.

Catherine Bell’s (1992) notion of ritualization challenges us to consider what the building of funerary petroforms accomplished that previous funerary practices did not. While funerals are times of grieving, they may also be ritual actions in which the dead are transformed from corpse to ancestor and the family from mourner to inheritor. It was in the authority of tradition that funerary ritual served as a process for both enacting and contesting relationships of power within and between the two neighbouring communities at Rocky Point.

Foregoing excavation, Coast Salish protocols of working with their dead challenged me to consider how the external and material attributes of funerary petroforms worked through space and time to produce a landscape inhabited by these durable, ancestral agents. Focusing on the mesoscale encompassing these two large cemeteries, this dissertation is an analysis of the depositional practices employed by the Rocky Point peoples in the burial of their dead. Tacking between an ethnographic thematic analysis of Coast Salish ritualization, a body of social theory, and the archaeological record, I used a novel suite of quantitative analyses to identify patterns in how these burials were made, in addition to how they were placed relative to one another on the landscape. Results point to a fundamental bifurcation in funerary petroform morphology and placement, in part, differentiating communities of ritual practice at Rocky Point. In particular, the results highlight the social significance of the spaces between the burials, as much as the burials themselves. This is exemplified by a perceptual paradox in which these above ground features, built according to shared dispositions of practice and placed on distinctive landscapes, are simultaneously and intentionally hidden from day to-day movement between villages. This Rocky Point sense of monumentality speaks to the liminality of their most powerful dead, anchored at the threshold of the living.

Funerary petroforms have a persistent power to entangle the living and the dead in oblique relationships of power. The resilience of this memory work, however, is not limited to the past. At Rocky Point and other cemeteries throughout the Salish Sea, these ancestral places provide living descendants with a tangible connection to family and community history. Possessing a durability that continues to enmesh people and places through time, funerary petroforms are one of the fulcrums upon which relations of power are presently balanced between Coast Salish and settler communities in British Columbia.

Edit 2016 : QGis et les différents logiciels cités dans ce document ont fortement évolué depuis la période où ces lignes furent rédigées. Il est donc possible que certaines méthodes présentées ici ne soient plus directement applicables, et demandent quelques adaptations aux ressources actuelles !

"Ce document est la compilation des différents documents pédagogiques distribués lors de cours donnés dans les universités de Besançon et Strasbourg à des étudiants de licence et de master durant les années scolaire 2012-2013 et 2013-2014. Il a été réalisé à l’aide de la version 1.7 de QGis et concerne également la version 1.8, bien qu’il y ait quelques différences entre les deux versions. Quelques modifications ont été apportées afin d'intégrer la version 2.0, qui présente quelques différences avec les versions précédentes.

Il ne s’agit pas d’un remplacement du manuel de QGis mais d’une aide face aux tâches de base auxquelles peuvent être confrontés les archéologues et étudiants en archéologie lors de la réalisation de cartes ou d’un sig :

    -  Obtention des coordonnées de plusieurs sites
    -  Intégration des coordonnées dans QGis (création de fichiers de points)
    -  Projection des données dans un système de projection différent
    -  Affichage de données quantitatives et qualitatives
    -  Intégration de données vectorielles (shapefiles) et raster
    -  Géoréférencer une image raster
    -  Dessin et édition de couches vectorielles
    -  Découpage d’une couche à l'aide d'une autre
    -  Documentation (bibliographie, téléchargement...)"

Effective spatial analysis is an essential element of archaeological research; this book is a unique guide to choosing the appropriate technique, applying it correctly and understanding its implications both theoretically and practically. Focusing upon the key techniques used in archaeological spatial analysis, this book provides the authoritative, yet accessible, methodological guide to the subject which has thus far been missing from the corpus. First is a richly referenced introduction to the particular technique, followed by a detailed description of the methodology, then an archaeological case study to illustrate the application of the technique, and conclusions that point to the implications and potential of the technique within archaeology. The book is designed to function as the main textbook for archaeological spatial analysis courses at undergraduate and postgraduate level, while its user-friendly structure makes it also suitable for self-learning by archaeology students as well as researchers and professionals. Mark Gillings is a Professor of Archaeology in the Department of Archaeology & Anthropology at Bournemouth University. His research interests concentrate upon the productive spaces that emerge through the integrated study of landscape, archaeological theory and digital archaeology, with a particular focus upon the potentials of all things geospatial and virtual. Much of his recent research has centred upon the prehistoric landscapes of southwestern Britain, and the relationships that animated the complex, multi-scalar motleys of monumental structures and traces of everyday dwelling that characterise this region. Piraye Hacıgüzeller is a senior postdoctoral researcher at the Ghent Centre for Digital Humanities and the Archaeology Department of Ghent University. Her research interests are the theory and practice of digital archaeology and, more generally, digital humanities, specifically in the cases of geospatial data visualisation, management and analysis. She is the co-editor of a recent book on archaeological mapping, Re-­ mapping­ Archaeology:­Critical­Perspectives,­Alternative­Mappings (Routledge, 2018). Gary Lock is Emeritus Professor of Archaeology at the University of Oxford where he has spent 35 years teaching and researching several areas of archaeology. One of his specialisms is the British Iron Age, especially hillforts, and he was Co-PI of the Atlas­of­Hillforts­of­Britain­and­Ireland. His other main area of interest is computer applications in archaeology, especially GIS and spatial archaeology, in which he has published several books. He has recently retired as Chair of the Computer Applications in Archaeology conference.

""Dozens of mosaic floors were discovered in excavations conducted in Tiberias and its southern suburb, Hammat Tiberias, from the early 20th century to the present. These mosaics adorned the floors of both public and private buildings, synagogues and churches; dating from the third through the mid eighth centuries. At present the mosaics from these sites have mostly remained outside of academic debate, due to their poorly preserved state and a lack of comprehensive research.

This work is a compilation of all available material regarding the mosaics from Tiberias and Hammat Tiberias, thereby creating a database able to serve current and future studies of the mosaics from this region of the Galilee. The group of mosaics considered here is important in that all were found within a small geographic region, dating from an extended period of time, which parallels the lifespan of the ancient city, thus providing insights into the development of the city's urban aesthetic. The study is facilitated by an analysis of stylistic and technical aspects on the one hand, and the architectural contexts of the mosaics on the other.

The compositions of the mosaic floors reflect prevalent fashions, belonging for the most part to the allover carpet style, incorporating figurative, floral and geometric patterns. The origin of allover carpet design may be found in the Roman mosaics of North Africa, in conjunction with local eastern traditions, especially from Antioch. The majority of mosaics from Tiberias and Hammat Tiberias are decorated by an infinitely repetitive floral or geometric pattern, covering the entire floor surface. Sometimes this consists of a single pattern, but the carpet also may be enhanced by secondary floral or figurative motifs, as in a border surrounding the central, major theme. This tradition is characteristic of the Byzantine period, and carries over into the Early Islamic period as well. Additional reoccurring compositions found in the mosaics are grid patterns created by schematic flower buds or inhabited scrolls, which are in essence a geometricized floral motif. In a number of cases, figures are strewn over a plain white background, disregarding naturalistic landscapes, their depictions resulting in a flat, two-dimensional effect. Narrative scenes and heraldic compositions usually appear within separate frames, creating pseudo-emblemata, as for example, in the nave of the Phase IIa Synagogue at Hammat Tiberias.

The iconography appearing in the mosaics of Tiberias is familiar from other sites in the region; these include themes such as: Nilotic scenes; Christian symbols (especially crosses); Jewish symbols (menorot, shofarot, bundles of the four species, architectural façades/book shrines, and incense shovels); Helios accompanied by the zodiac and the seasons of the year, and wreathes bearing inscriptions. The inhabited scrolls contain hunt and chase scenes as well as solitary animals and inanimate objects, which are unlikely to bear religious symbolism, since the majority have been found in buildings of a secular nature. The first known appearance of the combined motifs of Helios, the zodiac, and the seasons, is in the Phase IIa Synagogue at Hammat Tiberias. Far reaching assumptions cannot be made regarding later depictions of this iconography, but it is nonetheless of utmost importance that the earliest example is in the synagogue of Hammat Tiberias, which was patronized by associates of the Jewish Patriarchate, residing in Tiberias at that time.

Differences are evident in the stylization of motifs depicted in the mosaic floors.  Stylistic variations may occur among several floors within a single building, or may also appear within a single floor. These discrepancies may result from chronological differences in the construction of rooms within a building, consequently reflecting changing stylistic trends.  Another possibility is that different stylistic approaches may be the product of more than one artist employed in the laying of a single, or multiple floors.

The technical aspects of the mosaic art are made clear by a survey of the raw materials (local stone, imported marble and glass) used by the artisans. Likewise, the quality of the workmanship may often be defined by the density of mosaic stones per square decimeter; the higher the density, the higher the resolution of the image depicted. It may be seen that figures and complicated floral or geometric motifs often contain a higher count of stones than the simpler motifs or plain white backgrounds. In the current state of research, it is not possible to distinguish any particular workshop functioning in Tiberias during any given period. Stylistic differences in a single floor may be explained by the simultaneous work of two mosaicists, likely a master and his apprentice.

The final part of the work presents the mosaics within their architectural contexts. This aspect of the research is extremely important, since it may teach us about the hierarchy of the rooms within a building, thus better an understanding of the functions of the building as a whole. For instance, in a building containing both simple geometric carpets alongside intricate figurative motifs, it may be assumed that the rooms containing the figurative motifs are of greater importance than those paved by the simple carpets. Furthermore, the interpretation of the architectural spaces may be enhanced by an understanding of the mosaic floors. Conversely, the mosaic compositions may be more clearly understood by accurate identification of the spaces.

The compilation of all available material and the examination of the mosaics (both individually and as a group), in comparison with similar mosaics from the Galilee, as well as      from the greater Mediterranean region, have for the first time, brought the Tiberian mosaics to light, emphasizing their importance and creating a base of knowledge for future research of mosaics, locally and throughout the ancient world. 
""

The present work proposes a number of general objectives that can be grouped together in two blocks: in the first place, the historical study of an specific spatial area –the Ṭurṭūša circumscription- during a given chronological lapse –the transition from Antiquity to the Islamic World-, into which all historical sources that we have at our disposal will be incorporated. Secondly, the social dynamics analysis, the islamization process in this case, by using several historical pieces of information that were elaborated through our research. Finally, it is relevant to highlight as an innovative element the development of new methodologies and approaches applied to the study of this process, based on Spatial Analysis and the different geostatistical tools that Quantitative Geography provides us with.

Concerning the contents, this work could be divided into three different parts: a first one -with generic title Research Context (Block 1)- , where theoretical core ideas that we base on are exposed, and where a general and specific overview of previous works and description of the territory studied can be found. Secondly, we have named From the Study of the Observable to the Articulation of Historical Information (Blocks II, III and IV) the process we have carried out in order to obstain a data set for this research, and the way they are used to build a number of historical subjects and analytical elements through different points of view and methodologies. Finally, the third part, named Construction of the Historical Discourse, : social transformation dynamics (Blocks V and VI), tackles the most relevant issues of historiographical debates nowadays, and turning those pieces of historical information obtained into a comprehensive analysis of social transformations in the area of Tortosa, specifically, and the Iberian area, in general.

This is how the present piece of research has enabled us to present an extensive amount of new data and information on the territory, as well as to give us the opportunity to propose historical issues that we consider to be fundamental in current historiographical debates that focus on the origin of Andalusian society. Anyways, the guiding thread has been the historical transformation process that is inherent to the study of any past society, and that is the reason why we have made great efforts to show a diversificated and changing image. Even if the society of Al-Andalus is a historical subject full of shades and distinctive features concerning each study case, we think that a series of common dynamics has been established, that are of great value in understanding both the past of our specific territory here analyzed and the Andalusian State as a whole.

This paper presents a review of some aspects of the archaeological survey in which the impact of GIS has been most relevant. Those aspects include survey design and planning, geo-referencing of archaeological entities (error correction, increase of precision and homogenisation of projections), cartographic representation (with especial emphasis in map intelligibility and micro-topography of individual sites), as well as the integration of survey data with information collated from other sources (geophysical prospection, air photography, etc.).

This volume follows the changes that occurred in central Palestine during the longue duree between the 7th to the 11th centuries. That region offers a unique micro-history of the Islamicate world, providing the opportunity for intensive archaeological research and rich primary sources.

Through a careful comparison between the archaeological records and the textual evidence, a new history of Palestine and the Islamicate world emerges – one that is different than that woven from Arabic geographies and chronicles alone. The book highlights the importance of using a variety of sources when possible and examining each type of source in its own context. The volume spans ancient technologies and daily life, ancient agriculture, and the perception of place by ancient authors. It also explores the shift of settlements and harbors in central Palestine, as well as the gradual development of a new metropolis, al-Ramla.

Settlement and Urbanization in Early Islamic Palestine will be of particular interest to students and scholars of the history of Islam or the history of Palestine, or anyone working more generally in the methodology of historical research and integrating texts and archaeology.

As network theory has become a focus of increasing attention in archaeological research, it has been demonstrated in recent years that questions regarding communication and organisation in past societies can be fruitfully discussed as network problems. While computer-based network modelling has proven an effective way of refining such problems, attempts to address these by applying methods of network analysis to archaeological data have faced complications, and sometimes led to confusing results. Archaeological datasets of a sufficient size to justify the application of statistical methods are usually structured by a multiplicity of parameters, which makes it unlikely that a two-dimensional mapping as nodes and edges may capture and represent patterns of culturally significant relationship in a coherent way. This paper argues that network analysis in archaeology should not be regarded primarily as a means of mapping out data pertaining to past relations and interactions, but as a method of framing, assessing, and criticizing such data.

This thesis presents a brief overview of quantitative spatial analysis in archaeology with a discussion of the theoretical and methodological issues involved, and describes a set of methods for using Geographic Information System (GIS) software and spatial statistics for the assessment of archaeological resources. GIS has become a nearly ubiquitous and indispensable tool in many fields of resource management including archaeology. It is, however, applied by archaeologists most frequently for basic cartographic representations, large-scale regional analyses, or resource management data warehousing. Such applications underutilize the scale-independence of GIS, which is equally potent for intra-project data assessment. This thesis describes a set of GIS, geographical, and geostatistical techniques for the initial assessment of survey data in the identification and delineation of site boundaries, intra-site spatial analysis of cultural material to facilitate the assessment of site integrity, and expedient visualizations of these data through spatial correlation overlays.

Accessibility to fresh water, fertile soils, salt and other natural resources played an important role in prehistory. Accessibility is often determined in relation to target locations, for example a fresh water supply. The target locations are often points (e.g. sources) but could also be lines (e.g. streams). The simplest approach to calculate accessibility is based on the distance to the nearest target, more refined methods take several targets in the neighbourhood and their importance into account. An alternative definition of accessibility considers the ease with which a location may be reached from any other location in the area. This contribution discusses existing approaches for calculating accessibility and presents an alternative method that is closely related to kernel density estimation.