CHAPTER 3. METHODOLOGY
III. Sources and methods
2. Geographic Information Systems
2.1. Principles and problems
The use of GIS in archaeology dates to the 1980s and especially the beginning of the 1990s, when the first studies utilizing the technology began to be published.366 Archaeologists' interest was, in some respects, a foregone conclusion. The distribution of phenomena in the landscape has been a concern of the discipline for as long as there has been a desire to locate sites on the ground, or artifacts in their context. In the Mediterranean, however, the increasing frequency of intensive off-site field survey provided a particular impetus.367 Scholars were generating a hitherto- unprecedented volume of spatial data, and GIS promised a means of organizing it
more easily and comprehensively than was previously possible. Moreover, it
provided a means of relating archaeological to environmental data of the region under study. As Kvamme enthused in the preface to Gaffney and Stančič's classic study of settlement dynamics on the island of Hvar, "GIS and archaeology may represent an ideal marriage".368
Others, however, were less sanguine. At about the same time as GIS was added to the archaeological quiver, the rise of the post-processual critique369— primarily in Britain and so often focused on research in the Mediterranean—tended to undermine some of the assumptions which seemed to underpin it. As Given explains, "[b]ecause the easiest GIS data sets to acquire consist of topographic and environmental maps, it is all too easy to explain archaeological material solely in terms of environmental factors".370 Gaffney and Stančič revisited their work on Hvar five years after its publication and, indeed, found that several of their conclusions were environmentally overdetermined.371The question of whether or not such results are unavoidable enters into a long-standing discussion concerning the
364. Aldenderfer 1996: 4.
365. E.g. ESRI's ArcGIS software versions 9.2 and 9.3, which I have used both for managing the MHS geographic database as well those data upon which this thesis depends.
366. See e.g. Altschul 1990; Carmichael 1990; Warren 1990a; Warren 1990b. Among the earliest uses in Mediterranean archaeology was Gaffney & Stančič 1991.
367. Beginning in the early 1980s: Cherry 1983. 368. Gaffney & Stančič 1991: 5.
369. See discussion in Chapter 2, Section III.2.1. 370. Given 2004a: 167.
371. See n. 368. Full discussion of the authors' "sins of omission": Gaffney, Stančič & Watson 1996: 136-143.
epistemological status of GIS technology, which roused concerns of privileging positivism even among the community of geographers for whom it was designed.372 Questions of positivism aside, it is undoubtedly true that certain assumptions, especially concerning the nature of "space", are intrinsic to all GIS. Llobera cuts to the heart of the matter:
[a]n important aspect, if not the most important one, underlying GIS tech- niques is their reference to an abstract, singularspace, inert and empty, de- void of meaning and agency. Space is a medium in which human beings play out their activities. The assumption of abstract space is well illustrated by the heavy emphasis placed on the use of distribution maps in traditional spatial analysis. Most formal techniques require the study area to be represented in a bird’s-eye perspective, on to which imaginary Cartesian co-ordinates with a
fixed origin are overlaid, so it appears detached from the individual.373
Zubrow supplements these remarks by noting that the space presumed by GIS is, furthermore, a static one, from which time and temporal processes are mostly absent.374 These are, in essence, the characteristics of the "abstract space" with which Tilley contrasts the "context[ual], subjective", and fundamentally "human space" for which he argues in A phenomenology of landscape.375 The latter was influenced by— indeed inextricable from—the human experience of place. The former, meanwhile, was fired by the "white heat of positivism".376
In specific, it is difficult to argue against Tilley's diagnosis, especially as regards GIS. But the vehemence of his rhetoric, and the explicit presumption that phenomenological work could not be done in Cartesian space,377are belied by trends in archaeological use of GIS. The late 1990s and early 2000s witnessed, alongside more traditional studies,378 a multiplication of efforts aimed at making GIS responsive to aspects of human "being" in the landscape. Some have suggested ways of introducing temporality into GIS.379 A great many more have attempted to bring the user into the landscape, typically by modeling aspects of movement or vision. Among the former are Llobera's calculations of topographical prominence, and the way it varies as function of distance from landscape features, which highlight an important component of the experience of moving through a visible landscape.380 More recent work by the same author has attempted to account for the obfuscating effect of ambient vegetation on visual perception.381 Others, meanwhile, continue to
372. E.g. Heywood 1990; Lake 1993; Sheppard 1993; Smith 1992; Tayor 1990. 373. Llobera 1996: 613.
374. Zubrow 1990: 67-68. 375. Tilley 1994: 8. 376. Tilley 1994: 7.
377. Tilley 2004: 218: "Ancient stones in landscapes…cannot be known or understood simply from publications, from maps, diagrams, photographs and descriptions, because these are only representations. As representations they necessarily fail in conveying a bodily understanding of prehistoric remains. Statistical analysis, Geographical Information Systems and simulations, are, if anything, far worse."
378. E.g. those in Billman & Feinman 1999; Bintliff & Sbonias 1999; Fish & Kowalewski 1990. 379. E.g. Daly & Lock 1999.
380. Llobera 2001. 381. Llobera 2007.
use and refine cost path analysis to model regional patterns of movement.382 Under the circumstances, it is becoming increasingly hard to argue against the viability of GIS approaches to past social landscapes.
It is also true, however, that the returns on this investment of time and energy have been uneven. As yet, none of these studies has led to a wholesale renovation in methods of analysis.383 Rather, "[a]s a dispassionate evaluation of the practical differences in approach between the two sides in this debate shows", van Leusen notes with regard to traditional and aspirationally post-processual models, "the only significant difference is in the use of 'cognitive' variables" by the latter.384It is in this context that the analyses undertaken in this thesis should be seen. In formal terms, they are relatively conventional. But as the early, if modest, success of scholars like Llobera serves to demonstrate, a considered use of old techniques may nonetheless produce new insights.