Abstract
Weights of Evidence Modeling in Archeology, Rocky Mountain National Park
Track: Archaeology
Author(s): David Diggs, Robert Brunswig
Rocky Mountain National Park, USA is rich in Native American sites, many of which are believed to have religious purposes. Utilizing the ArcSDM (Spatial Data Modeller) extension, both site and individual feature data are incorporated into a Weights-of-Evidence model of the Park’s sacred landscape. The model incorporates elevation, aspect, local relief, slope, a cost distance from historic and pre-historic trails surface, and the relative visibility of five sacred landmarks. An Agterber and Cheng conditional independence test, an approximate t-test, and the model’s strength on a randomly chosen subset of sacred features are used to assess the model’s validity. The model is shown to be moderately predictive of sacred sites. Using the model results and other sources of information eight areas of further field survey work are recommended.
David Diggs
Geography Program, University of Northern Colorado
Campus Box 115
University of Northern Colorado
Greeley , Colorado 80639
United States
Phone: 970-351-1113
E-mail: david.diggs@unco.edu
Robert Brunswig
School of Social Sciences, University of Northern Colorado
School of Social Sciences, University of Nothern Colorado
Campus box 108
Greeley , Colorado 80639
United States
Phone: 970-351-2069
E-mail: robert.brunswig@unco.edu