While most archaeological measures of population rely on material proxies uncovered through excavation (rooms, hearths, etc.), we identify a technique to estimate population at unexcavated sites (the majority of the archaeological record). Our case study focuses on ancestral Tewa Pueblo villages in northern New Mexico. Uninhabited aerial vehicle (UAV) and instrument mapping enables us to quantify the volume of adobe architectural rubble and to construct a decomposition model that estimates numbers of rooms and roofed over space. The resulting metric is applied at ten Pueblo villages in the region to 'rebuild' architecture, and calculate maximum architectural capacity and the maximum extent of population size. While our focus is on population histories for large Classic period (A.D. 1350-1598) pueblos in the American Southwest, the model and method may be applied to a variety of archaeological contexts worldwide and is not limited to building material, site size, or construction technique.

A common property regime was established at the founding of the Maya site of Actuncan, Belize, in the Terminal Preclassic period (175 BC–AD 300), which governed access to land until the Terminal Classic period (AD 780–1000). This interpretation is based on urban settlement patterns documented through household excavation and remote-sensing programs. Excavations of all visible patio-focused groups in the urban core provided data to reconstruct residential histories, and a 60,621 m2 gradiometer survey resulted in a magnetic gradient map that was used to document buried constructions. Twenty ground-truth testpits correlated types of magnetic signatures to buried patio-focused groups and smaller constructions, including walled plots in agricultural field systems that were later exposed more fully through large-scale excavations. Combined, these methods provided data to reconstruct four correlates of land tenure systems: (1) the spatial proximity of residential units to land and resources, (2) diachronic changes in community settlement patterns, (3) land subdivision and improvements, and (4) public goods. Spatial analyses documented that houselots did not cluster through time, but instead became gradually improved, lending evidence to suggest the transgenerational inheritance of property rights in the Late and Terminal Classic periods.

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.

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This paper presents the results of a gradiometer survey conducted on the summit of Etowah's largest mound, Mound A, which stands some 19 m tall. Those results are compared to limited excavation data from the summit of Mound A as well as information from the wider region on mound summit architecture. The gradiometer results reveal the presence of as many as four buildings and an open-ended portico that are arranged around an open space and obscured from view below in the plaza. We argue that decisions about the kinds of buildings constructed and their arrangement reveal the interplay between agency and structure at a point of ambiguity in the history of Etowah. The buildings located on the summit of Mound A were built after the site had been abandoned and reoccupied. With that reoccupation, agents and their followers both connected to local traditions and attempted to reformulate them.