Current Projects
The Pilot Project
Using the "Mapping" project as an example, Geographic Information System (GIS) will be used to develop the predictive model of Bronze Age site locations in western Serbia. As GIS technology has become more accessible to many disciplines, its use in archaeology has become much more extensive.
For this project, both environmental and cultural factors will be integrated in the model to address why a site is where it is. We will compile an extensive database (e.g., phosphates, geological features, artifacts, and trade routes) to analyze the landscape connections of known sites in order to understand the complex interactions of spatial, temporal and cultural links. The ESRI software, ArcGIS©, provides an excellent platform to integrate, organize, and analyze diverse data sets. In addition, the image processing software, Idrisi©, will analyze remotely sensed data to then be merged with other data in ArcGIS. These datasets can be grouped into three categories:
- paleoenvironmental reconstruction,
- tin source locations, and
- cultural landscape.
Our GIS-based survey model for potential site location includes sources like historical and topo-cartography, aerial photography, satellite imagery and other types of raster data in order to index and classify the landscape so that it can be queried for connectivity.
Although previous studies suggest that there are various links visible in the material culture, the relationships of western Serbia with surrounding areas and the wider region are not clear and present a void in archaeological scholarship. Further data on the cultural dynamics of this period will come from two excavations in the Jadar region of western Serbia. One is at the first habitation/tin processing site ever found in this region, the site of Spasovine.
AMACS analyses will help to clarify its chronology and further investigate its function as a possible extraction site for tin ore.