Capturing People on the Move: Spatial Analysis and Remote Sensing in the Bantu Mobility Project, Basanga, Zambia

Pawlowicz, Matthew; Fleisher, Jeffrey; Luna, De

doi:10.1007/s10437-020-09363-0

Cited by 14 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…In African archaeology, recent studies have used a combination of remote sensing and spatial analysis for site detection, predictive modeling, and for understanding archaeological landscapes (Biagetti 2017;Davis and Douglass 2021;Fitton et al 2023Harrower et al 2020Klehm et al 2019;Ochungo et al 2022;Pawlowicz et al 2020;Reid 2016Reid , 2020Thabeng et al 2020). Creating models for site detection with multispectral imagery is increasingly accessible, with resources like Landsat, Planet, and Sentinel 2 imagery becoming available at increasingly high spatial, spectral, and temporal resolutions.…”

Section: Predictive Modeling Zonal Statistics and Archaeological Pros...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Open-Access Archaeological Predictive Modeling Using Zonal Statistics: A Case Study from Zanzibar, Tanzania

Alders

2023

JCAA

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This paper presents a case study using zonal statistical analysis for archaeological predictive modeling with open-access software and free geospatial datasets. The method is applied to the rural landscapes of Zanzibar, Tanzania on the Swahili Coast. This study used QGIS (version 3.28) to perform zonal statistical analyses of environmental datasets weighted by settlement classes digitized from a 1907 historical map, to create predictive models for settlement across the island. These models were compared against the locations of major precolonial archaeological sites on the island and site data from a random stratified archaeological survey in an environmentally diverse region of northern Zanzibar. The results show strong correspondences between larger permanent site locations and areas of high likelihood for site detection in the predictive model. Additionally, there were correspondences between areas of lower likelihood for site detection and smaller, ephemeral sites related to agricultural production in swidden field plots. These results attest to Swahili rural complexity and enable an understanding of the specific environmental affordances that structured settlement and land use over the last millennium, in ways that shaped colonial contact in rural areas and altered the sociopolitical development of Zanzibar and the East African coast. The methods described here may be applicable for researchers and heritage managers in Africa and the Global South, where funding for large-scale field projects, expensive satellite imagery, or software licensing is limited.

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Section: Predictive Modeling Zonal Statistics and Archaeological Pros...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Open-Access Archaeological Predictive Modeling Using Zonal Statistics: A Case Study from Zanzibar, Tanzania

Alders

2023

JCAA

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“…In the face of climate change, south central Africa is vulnerable to environmental threats like wildfires that will shift in frequency and character as vegetation and storminess changes across the region. This is particularly telling given indications of a long history of both wild and anthropogenic fires in the geoarchaeological record from the region (Pawlowicz et al 2020). Although current policy largely seeks to take fire management out of the hands of local settlements, such work has been highly localized in the past and carefully articulated with forms of animal, game, and land husbandry rooted in immediate conditions.…”

Section: Forgotten Strategies For Future Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

Lessons for Modern Environmental and Climate Policy from Iron Age South Central Africa

Luna

Pawlowicz

Fleisher

2022

Perspectives on Public Policy in Societal-Environmental Crises

Self Cite

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How do we develop effective environmental and climate policy for regions of the world with few—if any—relevant paleoclimate, vegetation, and hydrological reconstructions and, therefore, impoverished models of the environmental and human impacts of future climate change? What if such regions are in countries with limited financial, institutional, or instrumental infrastructure to generate those records? Research in historical disciplines offer direct and indirect evidence of the relationships between societal change and past environmental and climate change, without resorting to bald instrumentalism, but, as this study shows, we need to broaden our historical toolkit if we are to develop such work in regions of the world where oral cultures and less monumental, less permanent material cultural traditions prevailed.

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“…This ideally requires intensive field sampling of surface, archaeological and agricultural contexts as well as archaeological materials, and subsequent lab-based spectral analysis of samples to build a catalogue of multispectral signatures prior to remote sensing analysis (Gokee & Thiaw, 2020). Pawlowicz et al (2020) argue that the potential of remote sensing is only fully realised in combination with a significant quantity of background data to help delimit both remote and ground survey conditions, and on the availability of appropriate and sufficiently highresolution data. The application of remote sensing for framing systematic ground surveys has been transformative, as seen, for example, in investigations of land use and settlement patterns in the northern Ethiopian highlands (Harrower et al, 2020).…”

Section: Spatial Data and Remote Sensing In African Archaeologymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Pawlowicz et al (2020) argue that the potential of remote sensing is only fully realised in combination with a significant quantity of background data to help delimit both remote and ground survey conditions, and on the availability of appropriate and sufficiently high‐resolution data. The application of remote sensing for framing systematic ground surveys has been transformative, as seen, for example, in investigations of land use and settlement patterns in the northern Ethiopian highlands (Harrower et al, 2020).…”

Section: Spatial Data and Remote Sensing In African Archaeologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrating spatial and legacy data to understand archaeological sites in their landscape. A case study from Unguja Ukuu, Zanzibar

Fitton

Sulas

Lisowski

et al. 2022

Archaeological Prospection

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Spatial analysis is paramount for understanding, monitoring, and conserving ancient settlements and cultural landscapes. Advancing remote sensing and prospection techniques are expanding the methodological frame of archaeological settlement analysis by enabling remote, landscape-scale approaches to mapping and investigation. Whilst particularly effective in arid lands and areas with sparse or open ground cover, such as vegetation and buildings, these approaches remain peripheral in tropical environments because of technical and contextual challenges. In tropical Eastern Africa, for example, scales, resolution and visibility are often compromised by thick vegetation cover, inadequate access to, if not lack of, imagery resources and technologies, and the availability of comparative archaeological data for interpretation. This

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Capturing People on the Move: Spatial Analysis and Remote Sensing in the Bantu Mobility Project, Basanga, Zambia

Cited by 14 publications

References 49 publications

Open-Access Archaeological Predictive Modeling Using Zonal Statistics: A Case Study from Zanzibar, Tanzania

Open-Access Archaeological Predictive Modeling Using Zonal Statistics: A Case Study from Zanzibar, Tanzania

Lessons for Modern Environmental and Climate Policy from Iron Age South Central Africa

Integrating spatial and legacy data to understand archaeological sites in their landscape. A case study from Unguja Ukuu, Zanzibar

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