GIS or guess; The possibilities for archaeological predictive modelling on pre-Columbian Saba

Since 10 Octobre 2010 is Saba, as one of the BES-islands, under the legislation of the Netherlands. This legislation prescribes that an archaeological investigation is required when a certain surface will be disturbed by for instance building activities. Therefore it is common in the Netherlands to built an archaeological predictive model in order to get an accurate impression of chance of presence of archaeology in the concerning region. Their guidelines are drafted in the KNA. An archaeological predictive model displays the expectancy of archaeological sites in a certain region gradually and it is based on an analysis of the human behaviour in a certain area. Many elements of the landscape influence this behaviour and they are called the location factors. The elements that allows to map are individually valued and aggregated to one predictive model. This thesis analyzed the possibilities for building a predictive model for Saba. It mainly focusses on pre-Columbian archaeology...Show moreSince 10 Octobre 2010 is Saba, as one of the BES-islands, under the legislation of the Netherlands. This legislation prescribes that an archaeological investigation is required when a certain surface will be disturbed by for instance building activities. Therefore it is common in the Netherlands to built an archaeological predictive model in order to get an accurate impression of chance of presence of archaeology in the concerning region. Their guidelines are drafted in the KNA. An archaeological predictive model displays the expectancy of archaeological sites in a certain region gradually and it is based on an analysis of the human behaviour in a certain area. Many elements of the landscape influence this behaviour and they are called the location factors. The elements that allows to map are individually valued and aggregated to one predictive model. This thesis analyzed the possibilities for building a predictive model for Saba. It mainly focusses on pre-Columbian archaeology since there are better alternatives for mapping historical archaelogy. Saba is located in the Caribbean region and the landscape and archaeology of this island differ enormeously in comparison to the Netherlands. Therefore it is investigate if the Dutch guidelines for predictive modeling are sufficient for Saba. Maybe there exists better alternatives and is it required to adapt these guidelines. To determine what the location factors on Saba were the history and the landscape of the island and the Caribbean region is discussed. Additionally the artifact assemblage, the type of site and the location of the sites in the landscape were explained. At last the author conducted an expedition to the island in order to get an accurate impression of its landscape and its relation to the present archaeology. Afterwards all location factors were mapped, digitalized and value in archaeological expectancy. Next these location factors were combined on 12 different ways to a predictive model. 10 of these models were focused on the entire archaeological landscape of Saba and 2 models were focused on the archaeological expectancy of specified subsistence economy. To compare the quality of all these models, they were tested by the existing archaeological dataset on significance (Attwell and Fletcher 1985) and gain (Kvamme 1988). Due to these tests it turned out that a combination of the location factors slope, elevation and landingpoints leads to the most realistic predictive model for pre-Columbian Saba. Predictive modelling according to the Dutch guidelines are less suitable and therefore they need to be adapted to Saba’s circumstances.Show less

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GIS or guess; The possibilities for archaeological predictive modelling on pre-Columbian Saba