Paradigm or Practice? Situating GIS in Contemporary Archaeological Method and Theory

Abstract

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has been used in archaeology for four decades, and colloquially appears to have become a main tool in the geospatial aspects of archaeological practice. In this paper, we examine temporal trends in the use and/or mention of GIS in archaeological publications (books and journal articles), conference presentations, and websites. We gathered data through keyword searches and with formal sampling surveys and conducted both quantitative and qualitative analyses to characterize the changing nature and intensity of GIS use in archaeology over time. We show how archaeological GIS-use has grown from a few early adopters of the 1980's, through a slow initial integration phase in the 1990's, to a punctuated set of two major expansions in the 2000's and 2010's. While we nd that basic use of GIS has grown to the point where it can be considered ubiquitous -if not universal -in the discipline, we also discovered that the major focus in archaeological GIS advancement is methodological rather than theoretical. We provide a historical context to this temporal pattern and identify ve roadblocks that we believe have hampered the development of a theory-rich archaeological GIS: 1) de ciencies in the archaeological GIS education model, 2) over-reliance on commercial software, 3) technical/technological barriers, 4) gaps in acceptance of GIS, and 5) the perception of GIS as "just a tool." We offer initial suggestions for ways forward to mitigate the effects of these roadblocks and build a more robust, theoretically sophisticated relationship with GIS in archaeology.Recent research into publishing trends in archaeology has elucidated issues of prestige and power inequities (Beck et al., 2021), gender and diversity (Bardolph, 2014;Fulkerson & Tushingham, 2019), and the growth of methodological specialties (Gaffney, 2008). In this paper, we focused on the ubiquity and character of GIS use within archaeology. We proceeded with a three-tiered approach to understanding GIS publication trends. The rst phase was designed to provide a baseline, coarse-grained overview of the general temporal trends of GIS usage within the discipline across a broad set of publication types and venues. The second phase examines trends and types of archaeological GIS usage at a ner, more detailed scale in a targeted subset of publication venues. The nal phase seeks to contextualize the results of the rst two phases and to provide a more nuanced understanding of how archaeologists have used, are using, and will continue to use GIS within the discipline.