Geography Commons^™

An Analysis Of The Spatial Distribution Of Chiefdom Settlements: Modeling The Mississippian Culture In The Tennessee River Valley, Jonathan Witcoski

Masters Theses

Location-allocation models based on optimization criteria are appropriate tools for the analysis of archaeological settlement patterns. In early agricultural societies, elite classes might maximize their control of the population and resources by optimally situating their primary settlements. Location-allocation models can simulate the multiple factors that potentially underlie settlement site location decisions. I describe several maximal covering models and their applicability to understand the degree of political centralization in the Upper Tennessee River Valley during several Mississippian archaeological cultural phases (900 to 1600 A.D.). My results support the notion that the main objective of the Mississippian elite in choosing sites for …

Late Holocene Charcoal Stratigraphy And Modern Charcoal Deposition In The Pine Rocklands Of Great Abaco Island, The Bahamas, David N. West

Masters Theses

The paleoecological history of the Bahamas archipelago is one of change throughout the Holocene, and is recorded in the sediments deposited in solution holes. However, with its karstic pine rocklands landscape, Great Abaco Island has virtually no overland flow of water, neither rivers nor sheet-flow. This means that transport of charcoal produced through biomass burning and deposited in local ponds and solution holes is primarily microscopic in size and is probably transported by wind. Fires in the pine rocklands are mainly low-intensity ground fires that result in very little aerial transport of charcoal. Unless a fire occurs immediately adjacent to …

The Changing Landscape: The Urbanization Of Knox County, Tennessee, Charles Steven Brown

Masters Theses

Land use change, in the form of urbanization, is no longer limited to existing municipal boundaries. This change, however, is neither haphazard in direction nor unpredictable in scope. It is a series of highly evolved trends that have become one of the most highly studied and researched phenomenon in the social and physical sciences.

To examine land use change as urbanization for middle tier metropolitan area, Knoxville and Knox County Tennessee were chosen as sites for my research. While Knoxville still serves as the cultural, physical and governmental center for the area, residential and commercial development have scattered throughout the …

Century-Scale Trends In Climatic Variability For The Pacific Northwest From Western Juniper (Juniperus Occidentalis Hook. Ssp. Occidentalis) Tree-Ring Data, Christopher Aaron Underwood

Masters Theses

The history of the Earth’s climate shows many fluctuations, and there is reason to believe that climatic fluctuations will continue to occur in the future. Climatic shifts related to processes such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) initiate many environmental anomalies, including interruptions in traditional storm tracks, average precipitation, fire regimes, streamflow, and animal behavior. Our historical climatic records are too short to fully illustrate climatic fluctuations over long time scales. Proxy records are often used to extend these historical climatic records. In this dendroclimatological study, I used wester juniper (Juniperus occidentalis Hook. ssp. occidentalis) from central Oregon …