Routledge Computational Approaches to Archaeological Spaces (UCL Institute of Archaeology Publications)

This volume of original chapters written by experts in the field offers a snapshot of how historical built spaces, past cultural landscapes, and archaeological distributions are currently being explored through computational social science. It focuses on the continuing importance of spatial and spatio-temporal pattern recognition in the archaeological record, considers more wholly model-based approaches that fix ideas and build theory, and addresses those applications where situated human experience and perception are a core interest. Reflecting the changes in computational technology over the past decade, the authors bring in examples from historic and prehistoric sites in Europe, Asia, and the Americas to demonstrate the variety of applications available to the contemporary researcher. Review “The papers in this edited volume, which grew out of a 2010 University College London international archaeology seminar, are organized around three broad themes: spatial analysis, spatial modeling, and spatial experience. Roughly one-third of the book is devoted to each topic. The first set of three papers represents inductive, exploratory approaches to archaeological spatial analysis. The second set comprises four chapters offering more deductive and model-driven approaches. These first seven chapters of the book are the most interesting and, arguably, the most useful to the majority of analysts. The final set of three articles concerns the analysis of viewsheds, visualscapes, and 3D architectural models.... Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students/faculty/professionals.” ―CHOICE About the Author Andrew Bevan is a lecturer at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. He has active research interests in the social construction of value across widely ranging time periods and cultural contexts, with a particular focus on early societies in the Middle East and Mediterranean. He is author or "Stone Vessels and Values in the Bronze Age Mediterranean" (Cambridge, 2007). Mark Lake is Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, and coordinator of the graduate program in GIS and Spatial Analysis in Archaeology there. A specialist in GIS and computer simulation, he studies patterning in prehistoric field systems and models the origins of culture. He is author of several simulation programs, coeditor of "Geographical Information Systems in Archaeology" and of "Simulating Change," and author of numerous research articles.