A GIS method for assessing the zone of human-environmental impact around archaeological sites: a test case from the Late Neolithic of Wadi Ziqlâb, Jordan

• Published in: Journal of archaeological science 2011, Vol.38 (3), p.623-632
• Main Author: Ullah, Isaac I.T.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Asia; Cost-surface modeling; Environmental impacts; Excavation and methods; GIS; Interpretation, statistical and computer analysis; Laboratory methods; Methodology and general studies; Middle East and Indian Peninsula; Neolithic and chalcolithic; Pastoralism; Prehistory and protohistory; Simulation modeling; Site catchment analysis
• ISSN: 0305-4403; 1095-9238
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2010.10.015

Assessing the impact of prehistoric sites on their local environment is difficult to accomplish with standard archaeological methods. Simulation modeling offers a solution to this issue, but it is first necessary to delimit a site catchment, or “zone of impact”, around archaeological sites in which to carry out human–environment interaction modeling. To that end, I have developed a new method for GIS-based catchment reconstruction and distilled it into a custom module ( r.catchment) for GRASS GIS, which calculates catchments of a given area based on anisotropic travel costs from a point of origin. One method of applying this new module in exploratory catchment modeling is discussed using the pastoral economy of the Late Neolithic period in Wadi Ziqlâb, Northern Jordan as a test case. A model of Late Neolithic herding economy and ecology is constructed, which combines data from archaeology, phytogeography, range science, agronomy, and ethnohistory. Four sizes of pastoral catchments are then derived using r.catchment, and the herd ecology model is used to estimate the stocking-rate (carrying capacity) of mixed goat and sheep herds for each catchment. The human populations these herd numbers could support (between 3 and 630 people in the Wadi) are then compared with human population estimates derived from household architectural analyses (between 18 and 54 people in the Wadi) to determine the most probable catchment configurations. The results indicate that the most probable zone of impact around the known Late Neolithic sites in Wadi Ziqlâb was somewhere between 9 and 20 square kilometers, delineated by 3 and 4.5 km pasture radii respectively. ► Site Catchment Modeling can be improved using cost-surface models in a GIS. ► Archaeological catchments should be defined as a series of experiments. ► This requires connecting models of herd economy and ecology with archaeological data. ► The pastoral catchments of Late Neolithic Wadi Ziqlâb were likely between 9 and 20 km 2 in size.