Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

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 …

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 …

Four Dimensional Approach To Center City Transformation: A Case Study Of Knoxville, Tn: 1884—1950, Joseph Ryan Roberts

Masters Theses

Urban morphological models were created to enhance our understanding of urban growth and form. Prior to Geographical Information Systems (GIS), these models were supplementary products of ideas and concepts that set out to explain the spatial configuration of the urban landscape. While these models are of great importance to the field, they are mostly two-dimensional (2D) and static. Three-dimensional (3D) modeling has strengths in landscape visualization, manipulation, and planning, where analyses of historical urban landscapes may be carried out efficiently and thoroughly. A method that utilizes 3D modeling through time or four-dimensional (4D) modeling will enhance our understanding of transformation …

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 …

Integrating Social Media In The Development Of A Special Event Population Dynamics Model, Kelly Michelle Sims

Masters Theses

With society’s increasing participation in social media, scientists now have access to new sources of data that reflect our daily activities in space and in time. Such data are plentiful and, more notably, at an unprecedented granular level. The ability for users to capture and express their geolocation through their phones’ global positioning system (GPS) or through a particular location’s hashtag or Facebook Page provides a great opportunity for modeling spatiotemporal population dynamics. High resolution population models and databases for episodic special events can be extremely useful for enhancing emergency management and response. This research assesses the feasibility of improving …

Assessing Survivability Of The Beijing Subway System, Yan Li

Masters Theses

The assessment of survivability is a common topic in critical network infrastructure research. In order to examine the critical components whose disruptions can cause huge system degradation, many measures have been approached to depict the characteristics of network systems. Serving more than ten million passengers a day, the Beijing subway system, which ranks third in the world for its length and annual ridership, raises survivability issues in the face of potential disruptions of network components along with its constantly increasing complexity. In this research, we provide an accessibility-based survivability measure with which to explore how potential outages of network components …

A Gis Analysis Of The Dynamics Of Power: An Example From 18th-Century Piedmont Virginia, Crystal Lynn Ptacek

Masters Theses

The neighborhood surrounding historic Indian Camp plantation located in Virginia’s eastern piedmont provides an opportunity to examine past identity formation and power dynamics. Using public records and ArcGIS, I researched this historical community to explore networks in which these individuals were involved. Historic land patents and transactions surrounding the Indian Camp property were given a geographical context, and based on resulting maps, research has identified a dynamic neighborhood whose members were deeply entangled in one another’s lives. Many who patented lands around Indian Camp did not do so because of a lack of opportunity in their home counties or due …

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; …

Improvements In Multi-Tool Surveying Efficiency For Archaeological Geophysics, Caitlyn Marie Williams

Masters Theses

Conventional archaeological excavation methods are, by nature, extremely invasive and result in study areas being irrevocably altered for the sake of research. For this reason, near-surface geophysical techniques have been incorporated into archaeological investigations to aid in determining the locations of buried features with minimal damage to the site. The objective of this research was to perform a geophysical survey at an archaeological site on the Akrotiri Peninsula in Cyprus to locate evidence of a Roman naval base and to develop an improved data management workflow that will improve the usefulness of geophysical data to archaeologists.

An on-site archaeologist determined …

Predictive Modeling In Western Louisiana: Prehistoric And Historic Settlement In The Kisatchie National Forest, Erik Nicholas Johanson

Masters Theses

This thesis is an effort to provide the US Forest Service with a tool to effectively and efficiently protect and manage the cultural resource heritage of the Kisatchie National Forest. The development and subsequent evaluation of modeling efforts are vital to the archaeology of the region. There are two goals of this modeling project: to evaluate the active US Forest Service Predictive Model and secondly, if warranted, which it was, to improve upon previous models in the region. To do so 23 environmental variables were analyzed, many of which are inter-related, to develop a new set of probability zones while …

Geophysical Study At Old Stone Fort State Archaeological Park, Manchester, Tennessee, Stephen Jay Yerka

Masters Theses

The Old Stone Fort State Archaeological Park covers over 800 acres within Manchester, Tennessee, and is owned and managed by the Tennessee Division of State Parks. The central archaeological site within the park boundary is The Old Stone Fort mounds that enclose about 50 acres on a plateau above the convergence of the Big Duck and the Little Duck Rivers. The hilltop enclosure dates to the Middle Woodland Period, and radiocarbon dates obtained at the site range from the first to the fifth century A. D. Because of its size and apparent complexity, previous investigations of the site have been …