I am currently active in three areas of spatial analysis in archaeology and historical anthropology:
Ancient Landscapes and Land Use
Least cost paths walking simulation to abandoned agricultural fields
Many key aspects of Andean social organization are related to cultural conceptions and practices involving adaptation to and transformation of the landscape. Spanish colonial administration left us comparably paltry cartographic registries of how Andean communities and landscapes were organized. But we needn’t despair in our inability to reconstruct spatiality from other classes of textual documentation. Through creative use of Geographical Information Systems, spatial structures and relationships otherwise opaque in straight textual analysis can be excavated from Spanish colonial documentation. I have used GIS to spatialize information on land use recorded in a variety of Spanish colonial documents. Much of this research reconstructs colonial land use patterning by matching toponyms used to locate agricultural fields, boundaries, and settlements in the documents with their modern counterparts. Using these locations as the basic data, a variety of reconstructions of kin- and community-based land use patterns from the 16th and 17th centuries can be reconstructed.
Infield (Mobile) GIS
V.U. student Pablo Darelli entering data in ArcPad
My current research, involving excavations at an early mission settlement, integrates in-field GIS (using ESRI ArcPad, handheld computers, and tablet PCs) in a near-paperless data entry and management system. The project uses reflectorless total stations, photomapping, and other techniques for high-fidelity, high-resolution three-dimensional mapping and proveniencing.
Network and Spatial Syntax Analysis
Late prehispanic and colonial settlements in the highland Andes are generally well-preserved, affording easy access to analysis of networks of interaction within them. I am currently engaged in a project reconstructing the spatial syntax of an early mission settlement (see current research). This ongoing project promises to reveal how Spanish concepts of urban order articulated with, and transformed, an Andean village, thereby producing a new kind of community.
The Spatial Analysis Research Lab
I am the founding director of the Vanderbilt University Spatial Analysis Research Lab (SARL), an advanced facility for GIS and Remote Sensing analysis. SARL was founded through a Vanderbilt University Infrastructure grant, in collaboration with V.U. colleagues Francisco Estrada Belli (Anthropology), William Fowler (Anthropology), Pierre Colas (Anthropology), and Jennifer Lena (Sociology).
The SARL facility, located in Garland Hall (Room 010), houses six workstations and a server with 4 TB of storage, connected via gigabit LAN. There is also a large high definition television connected to the workstations for collaborative work and presentations. It is a self-serve facility for advanced users. For more information, see the SARL website. SARL is supported of the College of Arts and Sciences. SARL (and its website) has been operational since December, 2007.