Remote Sensing as Community Settlement Analysis at Moundville

• Published in: American antiquity Vol. 80; no. 1; pp. 161 - 169
• Main Authors: Davis, Jera R, Walker, Chester P, Blitz, John H
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington Cambridge University Press 01.01.2015
• Subjects: Archaeology; Community; Cultural identity; Excavation; Geophysics; Historic buildings & sites; Polls & surveys; Remote sensing; North America
• ISSN: 0002-7316; 2325-5064
• DOI: 10.7183/0002-7316.79.4.161

Remote sensing has revolutionized procedures for locating buried features at archaeological sites in eastern North America. However, the potential of instruments such as gradiometers to shape innovative research in ways that move beyond survey and testing is not always realized in practice. At the Mississippian site of Moundville, Alabama, we conducted a landscape-scale geophysical survey to serve as the guiding method of community settlement analysis. First, we mapped the distribution of magnetic anomalies across the site. Next, we defined the variability of anomalies and selected a sample for test excavations to correlate specific anomaly shapes and amplitudes with specific cultural features. Once confirmed as cultural features, we extrapolated sample results to identify unexcavated anomalies as specific building forms and other features with a higher degree of probability than would have been possible without confirmation by test excavation. Results include the identification and mapping of over 450 unexcavated probable buildings, nearly five times the number previously discovered in decades of traditional excavation. Because the buried probable buildings have different forms, sizes, distributions, and chronological spans, the interpreted gradiometer map is transformed through interpretation from a static palimpsest of anomalies to a picture of changing community settlement organization.