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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Faculty Publications

Series

2019

Archaeology

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Envisioning Natural And Built Environments As Sacred Landscapes In Prehistoric Casas Grandes, Mexico, Michael T. Searcy, Todd Pitezel, Steve Swanson Jan 2019

Envisioning Natural And Built Environments As Sacred Landscapes In Prehistoric Casas Grandes, Mexico, Michael T. Searcy, Todd Pitezel, Steve Swanson

Faculty Publications

We develop a hypothesized cosmography in an attempt to evaluate the sacred landscapes of the Casas Grandes cultural tradition of northern Mexico. This analysis includes attention to the relationships among archaeological features and aspects of natural geography in the Casas Grandes region. We draw on previous research regarding hilltop sites, architectural features, settlement patterns, and astronomical alignments noted at Paquimé, to envision how the Casas Grandes people mapped their landscape on both the built and unbuilt environments.


Simple Statistics And Archaeological Problems, James R. Allison Jan 2019

Simple Statistics And Archaeological Problems, James R. Allison

Faculty Publications

Among Keith Kintigh’s many contributions to archaeology was his emphasis on understanding the connections among quantitative methods, archaeological problems, and what archaeologists can reasonably infer from their data. In both publications and in the classroom, he demonstrated the value of simple computer simulations to understand quantitative measures and how they behave when applied to actual archaeological data. Archaeological research increasingly incorporates analysis of large databases and quantitative methods appropriate to “big data”, but simple statistics are still important to archaeological research. This paper uses computer-intensive methods to demonstrate that archaeologists (and others) frequently misunderstand and misapply some of the simplest …