Experiential Landscape Archaeology: modeling structured landscape perspectives through geospatial technologies and Higuchi-style indices

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Experiential Landscape Archaeologymodeling
structured landscape perspectives through
geospatial technologies and Higuchi-style indices

• L. Jesse Rouse
• Dept of Geology and Geography
• West Virginia University
• Committee Trevor Harris, Chair
• Gary Lock
• Ken Martis
• Jennifer Miller
• Briane Turley

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Directions and ideas

• Space to place
• Phenomenology
• GIS exogenous
• Experience
• Higuchi (Harris, LaKose and Rouse, 2005)
• Formalizing the structure of experience

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Landscape Archaeology

• Cultural Landscapes
• Landscape studies/histories
• Landscape Archaeology in the UK
• Spatial Science and Positivist Archaeology
• Post-positivist backlash
• GIS and Landscape Archaeology
• Phenomenology

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Tilleys Experience of Landscape

• Tilley (1994)
• Phenomenology of Landscape
• link between the individual and the landscape
• Based on the Phenomenology of Heidegger
• Filtered through Tuan
• Personal, visual perspective of the landscape

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Evolution of phenomenology

• Critique of phenomenology in LA
• Difficult to capture personal experience
• Lack of replicability
• Individualistic
• Phenomenological approaches
• Husserl - lebensweldt or lifeworld
• Heiddeger - dasein or being in the world
• Merleau-Ponty
• Tilley (2004) The Materiality of Stone

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Geospatial Technologies

• Spatial Science
• GIS and Archaeology
• 1990s
• Mapping, recording, predictive modeling
• Geographic Information Science
• GIS informed by theory
• Social critique
• Integrating new types of data and representation

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Sensual GIS

• Gillings and Goodrick (1996) looked at moving GIS
  beyond the flat 2D map
• Make the experience interactive
• Take full advantage of the senses
• Sight, sound, touch, and smell
• Primarily based on the representation of
  information
• Visual can play an important role in modeling

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Tadahiko Higuchi

• Holistic landscape assessment
• based on human physiology and psycho-physical
  approach
• how people perceive and view landscapes
• viewshed elements based on human physiology and
  landscape aesthetics

Optimum Angle of elevation
Optimum Angle of depression
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Traditional line-of-sight viewshed analysis
0-2m
2-5m
15-150m
150-1km
gt1km
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Time spent on viewing distances
Hull and Stewart (1995)
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Hi - Higuchi Indices

• Nine indices
• Line of sight
• Depth of invisibility
• Distance zones
• Angle of incidence
• Angle of depression
• Angle of Elevation
• Light
• Depth and texture gradient
• Temporal
• Composite index

Higuchi, 1986
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Example Higuchi analysis

• Laura LaKose, 2004
• Utilized ideas from Higuchi to consider the
  landscape architecture of a rural area in WV
• Focus is on the impact of an existing power plant
  on the landscape
• Modeled Higuchi indices using COTS software

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GAP LULC 30-meter Landsat - 26 categories
SSURGO
GIS model
vegetation
10m DEM
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Intervisibility
Depth and Texture
Short Distance Viewshed
Light analysis
Mid- Distance Viewshed
Depth of invisibility
Long Distance Viewshed
Angle of depression
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Composite Analysis
Reds poor viewshed qualities Beige viewshed
quality Green good to exceptional
landscape quality
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Converging ideas

• Phenomenological approach to landscape
  archaeology
• GIS and landscape archaelogy
• Physical and physiological perspective captured
  through Higuchi indices
• Linking ideas and information in order to
  consider prehistoric cultural landscapes

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Dissertation Goal

• To develop a structured experiential and
  phenomenological approach to prehistoric
  landscapes through the linkage of Higuchi and
  archaeological indices utilizing geospatial
  technologies.

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Objective 1

• Review the literature on
• existing ideologies and methodologies used to
  explore landscape archaeology
• geospatial technologies in archaeology,
  especially at the landscape scale
• phenomenology in archaeology, and
• Higuchi viewsheds.

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Objective 2

• Develop the conceptual model to link
  phenomenology, geospatial technologies and
  landscape archaeology
• Adapt, amend, and add to Higuchis nine viewshed
  indices to create an archaeological model to
  support a structured experiential approach to
  prehistoric landscapes
• Insert archaeological specific indices based on
  taskscapes, resourcescapes, and symbology, and
• tie phenomenological research to the spatial
  frameworks of Geography and landscape archaeology.

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Objective 3

• Develop GIS-supported Higuchi-based indices to
  study prehistoric landscapes by
• embedding existing Higuchi indices within GIS to
  take advantage of geospatial technologies
• establishing archaeological indices that blends
  spatial assessment with interpretations of
  prehistoric life experience, and
• coupling the GIS model results with personal and
  expert experience to interpret a given landscape
  that links egocentric and geocentric landscape
  perspectives.

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Objective 4

• Implement the developed indices through a case
  study based on an archaeological landscape by
• Utilizing archaeological and physiologically
  derived information
• Conducting field visit(s) to test the fit of
  the model obtained through implementing the
  indices in a GIS, and
• Assessing how quantitative indices differ from
  expert/personal experience.

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Objective 5

• Evaluate the use of structured indices to support
  an experiential landscape archaeology to
• understand the role and importance of visual and
  experiential forms of interpretation based on
  insights gained from case studies,
• determine how well the indices support a
  phenomenological approach to understanding past
  cultural landscapes,
• determine future research avenues for structured
  indices in prehistoric archaeological landscape
  analysis.

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Methods

• Build on cognitive, physiological and physical
  landscape
• Generalize visual landscape qualities
• GIS data analysis
• Dynamic factors - plumes, clouds, mist, smoke
• Link Higuchi to phenomenological approach
• A structured landscape analysis

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Ha - archaeology indices

• Resourcescapes (Trufkovic, ND)
• Taskscapes (Ingold, 1993)
• Sustenance
• Shelter
• Community
• Travel/movement
• Sacred space

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Hai enhanced indices

• Blend human physiology and culture to better
  understand human interaction with landscape
• Viewshed
• Perception
• Biological necessity
• Cultural interaction
• Cosmology

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Index perspectives

• Egocentric perspective (Hi)
• Based on the experience of now
• Takes into account memory to support the
  interpretation of current location
• Personal perspective
• Requires a personal experience of the current
  location only
• Geocentric perspective (Ha)
• Based on memory/knowledge
• Builds beyond current location by utilizing
  knowledge of area beyond current view to link
  view with the larger landscape
• Model perspective
• Requires a personal experience of the location
  and an understanding beyond the current view
• Hai

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Phenomenology, Higucghi, and GIS

• Existing attempts have focused on the egocentric
• Building a shared experience of the landscape
• Structured approach

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Hai proposed indices

• Line of sight
• Depth of invisibility
• Distance zones
• Angle of incidence, depression, and elevation
• Light
• Depth and texture gradient
• Distance to water
• Food acquisition
• Material acquisition
• Natural shelter

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Scapes to be indexed
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Case Study

• Hopewell and Adena mounds
• Woodland sacred and secular landscape
• Extant mounds represent distinct visual and
  sacred sites
• Recorded habitation sites considered to delineate
  possible communities
• Culture closely linked to water resources and
  material resources (lithic materials, clay, sand)
  
• Recorded camp sites and potential food resource
  sites considered

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Expected findings

• Build on existing attempts to integrate Higuchi
  into a GIS environment
• Adapt Higuchi indexes and build additional
  indexes to better capture cultural landscapes
• Merger of phenomenological experiences of
  landscape with structured indices and GIS

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Timeline

• One year project duration
• Dec Feb
• Literature review and data acquisition
• Feb March
• Create detailed indices and plan field visits
• March July
• Field visits and data capture
• Jan Nov
• Chapters as relevant work is completed
• Revisions and editing as necessary

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