Tag: Measurement Error

Will the Real San Marcos Pueblo Please Stand Up: An Examination of Bias and Error in Site Maps

 Shawn L. Penman, Ann F. Ramenofsky, Christopher Pierce, David Vaughan, and Eden A. Welker

Poster presented at the 63^rd Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, March 25-29, 1998, Seattle, Wa.

Maps make up an essential element of information about the archaeological record. Although archaeologists construct a wide variety of maps at different spatial scales, site maps are most fundamental. Site maps depict the locations and arrangements of architecture, features, and artifacts at ancient settlements. We routinely use site maps to carry out important resource management and research activities such as delineating site boundaries, estimating past populations, and reconstructing the internal organization of settlements. These uses of site maps are so common, in fact, that we tend to forget that the maps are two-dimensional abstractions and interpretations of a complex three-dimensional surface, and treat them instead as objective, accurate, and reliable descriptions.

In this poster, we take advantage of the existence of three, independently produced maps of one site, San Marcos Pueblo (LA 98) located in Galisteo Basin of north central New Mexico. We use these maps, produced over a period of 82 years, to examine similarities and differences in the ways the maps depict this large, complex settlement. Further, we evaluate how different goals, methods, conditions, and perceptions affect the accuracy and precision of site maps.

Quantifying Pottery in Pueblo III Assemblages from Southwestern Colorado

Christopher Pierce

The need to quantify pottery from archaeological contexts stems from the desire to compare different pottery assemblages or collections. Since a primary goal of the Sand Canyon Archaeological Project and the Site Testing Program involves quantitative and qualitative comparisons of assemblages to ascertain temporal, functional, and social relations, the methods used to quantify pottery for comparison must be considered. The task of quantifying pottery is complicated by the fact that most pottery recovered from archaeological contexts consists of broken pieces, or sherds, rather than the complete vessels--the unit of manufacture and use. This discussion begins with an assessment of the characteristics of sherds and vessels as units of comparison of archaeological assemblages and finds sherds to be the most appropriate unit in most cases. The two measures of sherd abundance used in the Crow Canyon analysis, count and weight, are then examined, and weight is found to be the best measure for most cases because of the effects that pottery technology, use, deposition, and postdepositional history (including excavation and lab treatment) have on sherd counts.