Digital Commons Network^™

Purpose In Place: Discerning And Forefronting Forgotten Landscapes Using The Methodological Lens Of Augmented Reality, Lindy Westenhoff

Doctoral Dissertations

Augmented reality (AR) is an under-studied tool that deserves more academic attention and gaze. By using the built landscape as its point of orientation, but providing a virtual interface with which to engage, the augmented landscape serves as a departure of the traditional digital-physical divide. This realm raises questions regarding purpose and intention, but also has its own limitations and issues with dynamic, complex spaces that change frequently. Each chapter of this dissertation stands alone as a “part” – they connect, however, through the use of this technology to answer questions unique to their spaces.

Part 1 explores the relationship …

Exchange And Social Interaction In The Tennessee River Valley: A Geospatial Approach To The Analysis Of Late Archaic Archaeological Sites, Justin S. Bailey

Masters Theses

The cultural manifestation known as the Shell Mound Archaic persisted in the lower Midwest and Midsouth region of the Eastern United States for over four millennia beginning in the Middle Archaic ca. 8900 cal BP and terminating at the end of the Late Archaic ca 3200 cal BP. A geospatial approach is applied to the analysis of exotic material exchange of the Late Archaic (ca. 5800-3200 cal BP) to assess how foraging peoples in the Tennessee River Valley interacted and persisted during this time. Exotic material items manufactured from copper, marine shell, steatite, and other nonlocal materials demonstrate distinct spatial …

Plants And People: Foraging To Farming Foodway Transition From Late Archaic To Early Woodland In Western North Carolina, U.S.A., Catherine Linn Herring

Masters Theses

During the Late Archaic to Early Woodland Transition, 3,200 years B.P. [Before Present], some gathering communities in the Eastern Woodlands began to increase their cultivation of plants. While archaeologists have located several sites in the Upper Tennessee River Valley and near the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee that explicitly show an increase in plant cultivation, less research has focused on the North Carolina Appalachian Summit Region. This paper uses paleoethnobotanical data and spatial analysis of site locations to explore cultivation and settlement patterns in Jackson and Swain Counties, North Carolina. Data include site locations obtained from the North …

Coalesced Cherokee Communities In The Eighteenth Century: A Spatial And Elemental Analyses Of The Ceramic Assemblage At Mialoquo (40mr3), An Overhill Cherokee Town In Monroe County, Tennessee, Christian Allen

Masters Theses

I use the ceramic assemblage from the Mialoquo site, an eighteenth-century Historic Cherokee community (A.D. 1760-1780), to study the social formation of Cherokees from different Cherokee town areas at the site. The assemblage is composed of at least two Historic Cherokee types, the Overhill and Qualla ceramic series. Three methods were used to evaluate the ceramics from the Mialoquo assemblage: morphological, spatial, and elemental. Morphological analyses (namely temper and surface treatment) of these sherds were used to examine ceramic variability of the assemblage. Spatial analyses, using ArcGIS, were used to identify patterns between ceramic series present. Finally, elemental analysis, using …

Investigating The Role Of Geospatial Technologies As A Supplement To Environmental Education: Development Of An Environmental Data Collection Application And Its Implementation In The Classroom, Evan James Norton

Masters Theses

Informal STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) education refers to science learning that takes place in a non-traditional setting, such as a museum, a library, and outside a classroom, based on the methods different from the traditional pen-to-paper style of classroom learning. A critical component of Informal STEM education is to ensure student understanding and using available technologies to better analyze and convey scientific data, particularly for the data that are spatial in nature. Combining mobile technologies with geographic information systems (GIS) in field data collection provides unique opportunities for students to feel stimulated and engaged in what they are …

Geographic Information Systems (Gis) And Predictive Modeling Of Body Disposal Sites, Annemarie Catherine Gundel

Masters Theses

Homicide victims are often discovered by accident or located through witness testimony, both of which are unreliable methods. Moving a victim’s body from the scene of the crime to a secondary disposal site may further complicate their discovery, delaying recovery, identification, and evidence collection. Homicides are exponentially more difficult to investigate, solve, and prosecute without a body. In the medicolegal context, a body disposal site prediction model is an alternative to relying on luck or witness testimony. Predictive models were created using body disposal data collected from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME), Connecticut, to explore the feasibility …

Streambank Erosion Mapping On The Nottoway River Using Gps-Based Above-Water Video, Emine Fidan

Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee

This project concerns the development of streambank erosion maps on military installations utilizing GPS-based above-water video mapping and image georeferencing techniques. The river mapped was the Nottoway River at the Fort Pickett military installation on October 10-11, 2015. Kayak-mounted above-water cameras were utilized to capture georeferenced images of streambank erosion. These GIS-based erosion classifications were utilized to develop erosion maps for determining streambank erosion conditions along the river. Areas of high erosion were identified as about two percent of the river (2167 ft. of streambank length). These maps allow for the opportunity to revisit the sites to determine changes in …

Using Spatial Analysis To Evaluate Fire Activity In A Pine Rockland Ecosystem, Big Pine Key, Florida, Usa, Lauren Ashley Stachowiak

Doctoral Dissertations

Pine rocklands are fire-prone ecosystems with limited spatial extent, and have experienced reduced area in the previous decades through habitat conversion and urbanization. The purpose of this dissertation research was to evaluate the historical range of variability of fire activity and spatial patterns of fires in a pine rockland ecosystem in the National Key Deer Refuge (NKDR) on Big Pine Key in the Lower Florida Keys. To investigate the temporal and spatial patterns in fire activity, I (1) evaluated the temporal patterns for fires in my study area in the NKDR, (2) analyzed differences in standard fire history metrics since …

Visualizing The Historic Landscape Of Montserrat: Social Justice Through Community Mapping In A Post-Colonial Environment, Kevin Patrick Russell

Masters Theses

Scholars across the disciplines of geography, archaeology, and history argue for need to reconceptualize representations of history in post-colonial environments and to actively orientate scholarly research towards increasing the inclusion of local knowledge with 'expert' academic knowledge through participative methods. This thesis will show that the landscape surrounding the Little Bay Plantation contains cultural associations vital to a "socially just" interpretation of Montserrat culture that is not captured by existing archaeological research centered on ruins of the plantation infrastructure and European historical discourse. Through a participatory research methodology this thesis shows that there are many memories inscribed within and upon …

A Study Of Colloquial Place Names Through Geotagged Social Media Data, Yuan Liu

Masters Theses

Place is a rich but vague geographic concept. Much work has been done to explore the collective understanding and perceived location of place. The last few decades have seen rapid expansion in the use of online social media and data sharing services, which provide a large amount of valuable data for research of colloquial place names. This study explored how geotagged social media data can be used to understand geographic place names, and delimit the perceived geographic extent of a place. The author proposes a probabilistic method to map the perceived geographic extent of a place using Kernel Density Estimation …

Spatial Discrepancies Between Nhdplus And Lidar-Derived Stream Networks, Nicole Marie Samu

Masters Theses

Many organizations demand that current water resource issues necessitate improved stream network mapping for more accurate and reliable watershed analysis and modeling results, which can ultimately enable better management and policy decisions. Stream network data from the National Hydrography Dataset Plus (NHDPlus) and derived from Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) are each widely accepted to be of superior quality compared to many other conventional datasets. Each dataset indicates potential to improve a wide range of water resource applications; NHDPlus for its high spatial accuracy and functionality, and LIDAR-derived networks for their high resolutions. NHDPlus is publicly available and widely used; …