Journal of Archaeological Science 39 (2012) 3371e3385

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Journal of Archaeological Science

journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jas

A locally-adaptive model of archaeological potential (LAMAP)

W. Chris Carleton a, *, James Conolly b, Gyles Ianonne b
a
b

Dept. of Archaeology, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC, Canada V5A1S6
Dept. of Anthropology, Trent University, Peterborough, ON, Canada

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Received 27 September 2011
Received in revised form
27 May 2012
Accepted 28 May 2012

A new method for modelling archaeological resource potential is presented that avoids some of the
mathematical violations and inconsistencies of previously-favoured techniques. The Minanha research
area in west-central Belize and a database of other Maya centres from within Belize are used as a case
study for demonstrating the utility of the proposed modelling technique.
2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
Predictive modelling
GIS
Maya archaeology

1. Introduction: description, prediction, and potential

Predictive models have a long history of use in archaeology
(e.g., Green, 1973; King, 1978; Kohler and Parker, 1986; Fry et al.,
2004; Finke et al., 2008; Jaros1aw and Hildebrand-Radke, 2009;
Crema et al., 2010). Although it is frequently assumed such models
predict the probability of encountering undiscovered sites, there
is a signicant difference between describing known-site locations, predicting the locations of unrecorded archaeological
resources on the basis of the knowledge gained by describing
known-site locations, and the concept of archaeological potential.
Despite being cognisant of the important, but often subtle,
differences between the aforementioned concepts, some interpretations appear to ignore the differences, which results in
poorly conceived interpretations of modelling results (e.g.,
Vaughn and Crawford, 2009; Graves, 2011). In particular, prediction with reference to probability and the notion of archaeological
potential are troublesome and when conated they obstruct the
clear development of conclusions derived from studies involving
archaeological prospection. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the problems with most past and current archaeological
predictive models, and to present a method for evaluating
archaeological potential that violates fewer statistical principles.
For this analysis, a clear distinction is made between probabilistic
predictions of the locations of unrecorded archaeological
* Corresponding author. Tel.: 1 604 367 8755.
E-mail addresses: wcarleto@sfu.ca (W.C. Carleton), jamesconolly@trentu.ca
(J. Conolly), gianonne@trentu.ca (G. Ianonne).
0305-4403/$ e see front matter 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2012.05.022

resources and the development of archaeological potential

models.
Although potential is different than probability, there are
examples wherein the interpretation that follows the model
clearly relies on dening the latter as tantamount to the former
(e.g., Graves, 2011). In order to try and avoid the same confusion,
potential for this analysis will be dened as the relative suitability
of different land parcels within a conned region for human
occupation. In a sense, we are attempting to construct a model of
the ideational archetype, and the distribution of related tolerances, that inuenced the spatially contextual decisions of
humans in the past, which led to observed settlement patterns in
the archaeological record (Kohler and Parker, 1986, 432e435).
When considering where to locate themselves in varied landscapes, people must have had some sense of where they ought to
be in order to perform the range of functions they desired to
perform. Somewhere in the available archaeological data there is
a signal which describes a set of mental archetypes (Kohler and
Parker, 1986, 435) that were both mimetic and adaptive, which
inuenced the interaction between humans and their environment by affecting the decision-making process about how to
utilize the landscape. Our task is to nd the signal while taking
account of the complexities of the data and those habituallocational archetypes. Viewing the problem in this way highlights the
need to address issues of scale in landscape analyses and spatial
decision-making perspective (see generally Lock and Molyneaux,
2006; Lock, 2000; Ashmore, 2002). It will be instructive to identify the problems with the popular methods before proposing
a solution.

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W.C. Carleton et al. / Journal of Archaeological Science 39 (2012) 3371e3385

2. A critique of logit models and weights-of-evidence

approaches
Two common approaches to predictive modelling have been
selected for review: logit models and the Bayesian weights-ofevidence method. In addition to the archaeological misapplication of logit models for archaeological prospection, it has been clear
to economists for some time that basic logit models are of little use
altogether for discrete choice problems (McFadden, 1974, 2001;
Hensher and Greene, 2003; Cramer, 2006). Weights-of-evidence
models (Bonham-Carter et al., 1989; Agterberg et al., 1993), on
the other hand, are suitable in some situations (e.g., Ford et al.,
2009), but the primary assumptions and requirements of this
approach must be taken into consideration carefully before it can
be adapted to archaeological prospection.
Logit models are semi-parametric estimators of odds in discrete
choice scenarios with three major faults concerning archaeological
prospection that are, to some extent, also problems for other elds
(for a full treatment see Cramer, 2006). First, although logit models
are nonparametric with respect to the predictor variables, the
function applies a logistic distribution in order to calculate the odds
of a binary result, which insists that the probability of obtaining
a given result is always monotone increasing with respect to any
continuous or ordered discrete variable. If the evidence suggests
a bimodal distribution of odds with respect to any variable then
either two basic logit models would be necessary or the variable
would have to be divided into two bins in order to describe accurately the odds of a binary outcome. Second, each observation in
the data-set can only have one value for each variable in the model
associated with it and, in some cases, an undue weight is given to
that value as a result when a distribution of values would more
accurately represent the phenomenon. Tangentially, there is
another problem with logit models that relates to untenable
assumptions about data distributions referred to as the problem of
preference heterogeneity (McFadden, 2001, 356; Boxall and
Adamowicz, 2002, 421e423). The sample data on which the logit
model is imposed may contain a heterogeneous group and equal
weight for the relative importance of each variable in the model
may be a poor assumption for the logit model. Third, non-site
locations are a critical component of the logit model and random
locations cannot, in any sense, stand in for known non-site locations. The issue with non-site locations is relevant for weights-ofevidence models as well and will be taken up next.
In cases where non-site locations are available, from intensive
surveys or appropriate eld sampling strategies, logit models may
be sufcient despite the crudeness of the model. The weights-ofevidence approach may apply equally well given the same
constraint. However, without non-site locations both the logit
model and the weights-of-evidence approaches are entirely
impossible because the foundations of the models are severely
violated. The logit model requires a binomial-distributed data-set
of disjoint outcomes (Cramer, 2006, ch. 2). Without non-site
locations, the data-set is actually indicating known-sites and
unknown status rather than known-sites and non-sites. When
random locations are used in lieu of known non-site locations, the
outcomes are not disjoint and, therefore, binary response modelling is generally invalid. The problem created for the weights-ofevidence approach is similar. The weights-of-evidence approach
uses odds to determine the likelihood that a site will be found in
a particular region given a set of realizations of spatial variables
(Bonham-Carter et al., 1989; Agterberg et al., 1993). The odds are
expressed as a ratio of the probability that an event will occur to the
probability that the event will not occur given some set of common
variables. If random locations were substituted for known non-site
locations, the probability that a site is not present is actually

undened and the problem cannot be solved. In these circumstances, a more appropriate method is to approach the problem
differently and instead consider the potential correlates between
site-density and environments, which involves shifting scales from
individual locations to regions. This is an altogether different
exercise, and will not be considered in this paper, although interested readers are directed to Kamermans (2000) and Alexakis et al.
(2011) for further information.
In addition, landscape variability confounds predictive models.
Landscapes are generally varied, inhomogeneous, or patchy (e.g.,
Voorhies, 1972; Fedick and Ford, 1990; Ford and Fedick, 1992;
Dunning and Beach, 1994; Fedick, 1995, 1996; Dunning et al.,
1998; Fedick et al., 2000; Kunen, 2001; Penn et al., 2004; Ford
et al., 2009; Patterson et al., 2010; Zhang et al., 2010), but logit
and WofE models are largely insensitive to landscape variability.
This is problematic because settlement behaviour must have been
responsive to local conditions while simultaneously determined by
larger-scale patterns of landscape use. Logit models and weightsof-evidence approaches are insufcient techniques in that regard
as they are unable to incorporate and spatially weight potentially
determinate variables.
The issues just raised touch on a signicant theoretical problem
confronted by archaeologists regarding the scale of spatial analyses
and our attempts to understand the minds of ancient people (see
Lock and Molyneaux, 2006; Lock, 2000; Ashmore, 2002; Verhagen
and Whitley, 2012, for detailed discussions of the theoretical
issues). It is not only our task to assess the potential of the modern
landscape to bear archaeological resources, but we are also charged
with attempting to understand the decision-making processes of
ancient people. When a model is incapable of addressing issues of
scale, or integrating multiple analytical and theoretical scales, it
obscures the ancient decision-making process that is potentially
visible in the archaeological record thereby neglecting a critical
component of our archaeological raison detre. Part of the solution
to this sort of problem, as suggested by Llobera (2010), is for
archaeologists to be more directly involved in developing our own
methods rather than porting poorly tted methods over from other
disciplines.
In sum, there are numerous problems with two popular
approaches to archaeological prospection including violations of
crucial statistical assumptions, the use of crude models that insist
on reducing varied spatial phenomena to single values, and a lack of
attention to spatial variability with regard to archaeological sites
and the people that created them (see Ebert, 2004a, 2004b; and
references therein for additional criticism) There is a need to
develop a modelling technique that better addresses the issues
faced by archaeologists.
3. A locally-adaptive model of archaeological potential
(LAMAP)
Our proposed method consists of two stages and a spatial grid
(i.e., a raster map) covering the study area is used to contain the
nal model results. In the rst stage, a joint empirical cumulative
distribution function (joint-ECDF) is created for each known-site
and every location of interest Loi in the output raster is
compared to the joint-ECDF of each known-site. The joint-ECDF for
any site in the model will be dened by a set of raster maps where
each map describes one variable and the distributions consist of all
the cells in the sample area around a given known-site. Sample
areas can be arbitrarily dened so a number of potential extensions
of the model could be created to incorporate various landscape or
cultural parameters (e.g., site-catchments or spatial anisotropy). A
vector is created for each Loi that describes the probabilities that
a point with the same realizations of a common set of variables as

W.C. Carleton et al. / Journal of Archaeological Science 39 (2012) 3371e3385

3373

the Loi would t one or more locational archetypes dened by the

known-site set. The second stage involves computing the probability of the union for the Loi vector of probabilities created in stage
one. A union of the outcomes from stage one indicates the probability that the Loi is congruent with a locational archetype suggested by any site in the known-site set. The question being asked
for each Loi is as follows: how likely is it that the Loi could be located
in the joint-ECDF of each known-site location? Since the probability
of an exact realization of some variable in a CDF equals zero, a range
of values is selected instead and the known-site joint-ECDFs
operate like look-up tables for probabilities. The nal output grid
contains a probability at each Loi that describes the likelihood of
that point to have been considered suitable for whatever activities
are described by the known-site data.
3.1. Formulation
Somewhat more formally, the process for calculating the output
spatial grid of probabilities is as follows. Let v be a vector of k model
variables and let D be the joint-ECDF of the same k variables dened
for each known-site such that

v y1 ; y2 ; .; yk T

indicates the transpose

(1)
Fig. 1. The optional distance-weighting function.

and

Dy1 ; y2 ; .; yk PV1  y1 ; .; Vk  yk :

(2)

For each location of interest l (i.e., each pixel in the output raster
map) calculate the probability that a point with the same realization of k variables occurs in the sample area surrounding each
known-site using the corresponding D. The probability that l is
indicative of D must be calculated using an interval of each lvk such
that

l
yk  lyk  lyk ;

(3)

and therefore

3.3. Advantages

Dl P l
y1  V1  lv1 ; .; lyk  Vk  lyk :

(4)

Let s be a vector containing the D(l) relating l to each known-site,

a, so that

s Dl1 ; Dl2 ; .; Dla

T

(5)

Then, the probability of the union, S, for s of each l is given by

n

Sl h W sa wa
a1

a signicant impact on the analysis, but strongly dependant

variables should be avoided unless the calculations are modied
accordingly. Second, the events in s must not be mutually
exclusive. Mutual exclusivity between the outcomes would only
exist if the location of interest was exclusively comparable to
a subset of the known-sites. Both of the assumptions are met by
the Maya data-set and variables used in the pilot study presented
herein.

(6)

where n is the number of sites in the known-site set and w is the

weight assigned to the probability on the basis of the distance from
l to a (see Fig. 1). It should be stressed that the union must be
calculated using the inclusioneexclusion principle (Andrica and
Andreescu, 2009, 99e103). The w is calculated using a distance
decay function that suits the analysis. Following the procedure just
outlined for each pixel in a spatial raster of a particular study area
will produce the archaeological potential map for that area.
3.2. Assumptions
As it has been proposed, the modelling technique requires
that two important assumptions are met. First, the variables in
question must be independent or the calculation of the joint-ECDF
becomes more complicated because conditional probabilities
must be considered. Weak dependence is unlikely to have

Several advantages become apparent when the proposed

modelling technique is employed for archaeological problems:
 Continuous and discrete-ordered variables can be employed
and the distributions of those variables around known-site
locations can be explicitly included in the archaeological
potential model instead of using point data and binary
functions.
 No parametrization of the natural spatial phenomena is
involved in the creation of the potential model, which evades
the issues regarding nding appropriate parametric models for
complicated natural phenomena and for dealing with spatial
autocorrelation (Miller et al., 2007; Dale and Fortin, 2009).
 Because each site is considered separately, any number of site
types may be involved and multiple locational archetypes can
be compared to each point in the output grid so that a more
holistic assessment of the relative suitability of any given point
in a study area is achieved.
 There is no need to include known non-site locations and,
therefore, the technique is better suited to lower cost research
projects that do not include the sampling strategies that would
otherwise be required in order to nd known non-site
locations.
 Two extensions of the model are easily incorporated that will
account for local spatial variation in locational archetypes and
temporal variation (see Crema et al., 2010) in landscape use. By
weighting the vector of probabilities created in stage one of

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W.C. Carleton et al. / Journal of Archaeological Science 39 (2012) 3371e3385

the analysis, relative or absolute distances in time or space

between any given point in the output grid and the known-site
data-set can be incorporated into the nal calculation.
 There are very clear decisions about the model to be made,
which can be taken in the context of a particular study area and
with respect to particular analytical goals. The size and shape of
the sample area around known-sites is arbitrary and can t any
research agenda while the use of weighting functions based on
distance or chronology is optional and the specic function
employed can be of any sort imaginable.
 The method gracefully incorporates multiple decision-making
scales by capturing multi-scale signals in locational behaviour.
There are other issues that must be considered in the context of
a specic study including the resolution of the analysis, the suite of
variables selected for the potential model, and the interval selected
for the ECDF comparisons in the rst stage of the LAMAP calculation. The resolution for the input data will likely be determined by
the data-set with the lowest resolution while the output resolution
will be strongly inuenced by the input data resolution and
computational constraints. Generally, the variables involved in the
analysis will be determined by availability and the goals of the
study. Research directives will also inuence the size of the ECDF
interval, which is related to the conservativeness of the nal
archaeological potential estimates. A wider interval will result in
higher probabilities and, therefore, a more liberal estimate of the
concordance between a location of interest and the spatial archetype(s) represented by the known sites. Justications for all of the
analytical decisions and modelling parameters will be presented
after the pilot study is introduced.
4. The pilot study and the Minanha project
Minanha is a small Maya city-state that emerged as a signicant
micro-regional power in the 8th century AD (Ianonne, 2005, 2006,
2010). Investigations so far suggest that Minanha was peripheral to
the larger Maya communities nearby for most of its occupancy. One
of the goals of the Minanha research project is to better understand
the relationship between the site, the surrounding smaller centres,
and the local environment with respect to collapse phenomena in
the context of panarchy and complex adaptive cycles (Gunderson
and Holling, 2002). Creating a map of archaeological potential
that is responsive to local conditions and that attempts to incorporate the locational archetype(s) of the ancient Maya will highlight some of the ways in which the community of Minanha
adapted to their environment. The site is in a rather odd place in
some respects because of the notable lack of a signicant source of
potable water. If the location of Minanha is unusual compared to
other sites, and in that sense does not conform to some common
locational archetype of where habitation sites ought to be located
for the ancient Maya, the proposed modelling technique will reveal
that by assigning a comparatively low-potential estimate to the
sites location. The potential model can be used to better understand where known-sites are located and where unrecorded
archaeological resources of a kind might be located. A number of
analytical considerations must be reviewed before the results of the
pilot potential model can be assessed.

Fig. 2. The study and data areas and all sites involved in the model (Circles indicate
known-sites and squares indicate hold-out sites): 1. Yalbac, 2. Site 28, 3. Young Gal, 4.
Happy Home, 5. Banana Bank, 6. Mount Hope, 7. Barton Ramie, 8. Mount Lookout,
Spanish Lookout, 9. Camelote, 10. Ontario, 11. Blackman Eddy, 12. Floral Park, 13. Pol Sak
Pak, 14. North Caracol Farm, 15. Baking Pot, 16. Esperanza, 17. Yaxox, 18. El Pilar, 19.
Bullet Tree Falls, 20. Alta Vista, 21. Buenavista, 22. Xualcanil, 23. Pooks Hill, 24. Actun
Tunichil, 25. Actun Nak Beh, 26. Cahal Uitz, 27. Pacbitun, 28. San Felipe, 29. Negroman,
30. Zubin, 31. Nohoch, 32. Chaa Creek, 33. Chan, 34. Las Ruinas, 35. Uchentzub, 36. Site
29, 37. Buenavista, 38. Callar Creek, 39. Xunantunich, 40. Succotz, 41. Soccotz, 42.
(EasteWest) Actun Chapat, Tipu, Guacamayo, Cahal Pech, 43. Dos Chambitos, 44. Vaca
Falls, 45. Minanha, 46. Waybil, 47. S.G.D., 48. Camp 6, 49. Starkey Hill, 50. Ixchel, 51.
Tzimin Kax, 52. Cohune, 53. Chaquistero, 54. Ceiba, 55. Chapayal, 56. Dos Tumbas, 57.
Retiro, 58. Puchituk, 59. Caracol, 60. Conchita, 61. Ramonal, 62. Cahal Pichik, 63.
Mountain Cow, 64. Hatzcap Ceel, 65. Cahal Clinil, 66. Actun Balam, 67. Round Hole
Bank, 68. D.S., 69. Rockshelter with Platforms, 70. Scattered Low Mounds, 71. Saacholil,
72. Espernanza, 73. Xnaheb.

were made available by Dr. Walter Witschey (Per. Comm. 2011)

from an online database of Maya archaeological sites (Brown and
Witschey, 2010) and all of the site coordinates within the Minanha study area were recorded with hand-held GPS units. It is
assumed, when it is not obvious in the relevant publications, that
coordinate locations refer to site epicentres. Many of the sites in the
known-site data-set are mid-size ceremonial and administrative
centres with some notable exceptions like Caracol, which is a very
large centre. Therefore, it should be noted that the generic term site
does not really do justice to the data-set in the pilot study, but has
been used for continuity with the description of the method presented above and the term centre is connotatively more accurate
for the known-site set. A full list of site names and some relevant
information about the data is presented in Appendix A.
4.2. Data processing

4.1. Known-sites
The sites involved in the modelling process (see Fig. 2) were
selected primarily on the basis of the accessibility of their coordinates in publications. A total of 69 sites are included in the knownsites database and a further eight sites were withheld, at random,
from modelling for validation purposes. Most of the site locations

The elevation data, which formed a signicant component of the

pilot study, was derived from two sources and the processing that
occurs in the data banks and research centres involved is well
published (Lang and Welch, n.d.; Alley, 1996; Thome et al., 1999;
Palluconi et al., 1999; Alley and Jentoft-Nilsen, 2001). ASTER data
was acquired from Japans Earth Remote Sensing Data Analysis

W.C. Carleton et al. / Journal of Archaeological Science 39 (2012) 3371e3385

Centre (ERSDAC) and NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) along

with an SRTM digital elevation model (DEM). Two sensors registering radiation in the visual near-infrared (VNIR) bandwidth, on
the ASTER platform were used by ERSDAC to create a highresolution (15 m) stereoscopic DEM of the data area. However,
because the VNIR bandwidth is responsive to cloud-cover, the DEM
contained elevation anomalies that represented the elevations of
clouds over the data area. Despite cloud-cover over less than 10% of
the data area, it was desirable to remove the clouds. The DEM,
primarily composed of ASTER data, used in the pilot study was
created by employing a cloud-cover isolation algorithm adapted
from previous studies (Irish, 2000; Irish et al., 2006; Hulley and
Hook, 2008) and replacing cloudy pixels with co-local SRTM data.
For the purposes of the analysis, and in the interest of using as
much data as was reasonable for the project, it is important to
distinguish between two overlapping areas: the data area and the
study area (see Fig. 2). The data area refers to the smallest area for
which data was available given the logistical connes of the project
and which encompasses the study area. As it happens, the data with
the smallest areal extent that also intersects all of the other data is
the soils map and it denes the size and shape of the data area. The
study area is dened by the Minanha Project and is the only area for
which a complete potential map was generated. It is important to
note that the primary data format for this analysis was raster-based
with a spatial resolution of 15 m for input data and 30 m for the
output grid unless otherwise indicated, and the datum was
consistently set to WGS84 with a UTM projection.
4.3. The variables
A fairly common suite of variables (e.g., Judge and Sebastian,
1988; Wheatley and Gillings, 2002, 166e181; Conolly and Lake,
2006, 179e182; Espa et al., 2006; Jaros1aw and Hildebrand-Radke,
2009; Vaughn and Crawford, 2009; Graves, 2011) was included in
the test case for the potential model, which can be categorized into
physiographic and resource-oriented types (see Table 1). Particularly with the low-cost and ready availability of medium resolution
satellite data, variables based on DEMs should be explored as
a matter of course in landscape and settlement studies, and they
constitute the basis of the physiographic variables included in this
study. Elevation itself was found to be unrevealing with respect to
site locations (see Fig. 4) with the exception that the data can be
generally characterized as bimodal since the Vaca Plateau and
Mountain Pine Ridge occupy the southern portion of the data area
while the Belize River Valley occupies the northern portion (see
Fig. 2). The other variables that do appear to be distinguishing
characteristics for site location, and which were generated using
the DEM, are slope and terrain ruggedness (see Figs. 3 and 4).
Terrain ruggedness was estimated with standard scores and was
calculated for each cell in the data area by using circular neighbourhoods with radii of 1 km. Aspect was also considered in the
physiographic suite, but it was ruled out as a signicant contributing factor because the distribution of aspect values within 1 km of
Table 1
Model variables.

3375

known-site locations was not signicantly distinguishable from the

distribution of the same values throughout the data area (see
Fig. 4).
Of the resource-oriented data types that were examined, the
distance to the nearest river and soil types appeared to be the most
signicant individually while overland water ow estimates (using
r.watershed; GRASS Development Team, 2010) were not found to
be useful for distinguishing between known-sites and the rest of
the data area (see 4). River locations were approximated using the
DEM, 1:50 000 topographic maps, and Google Earth (Google Inc.,
2010) in order to create a realistic model of surface water that ts
the DEM. Soil types were not used directly and the construction of
the soils data-set requires further explanation.
Rather than taking the approach of Ford et al. (2009), no
assessment of the agricultural suitability or productivity of
soils was made because the standard soil survey information
available for the data area (Wright et al., 1958, 1959; Baillie et al.,
1993) does not include enough information in order to accurately
account for agricultural productivity. In addition to having enough
N, K, and P, and the correct range of pH, the particular types of
N-containing molecules in the soil must be known in order to
determine the availability of N for plant metabolism (Epstein and
Bloom, 2005, ch. 9). Although the soil maps provided by Wright
et al. (1958) are very useful resources, the information is still too
coarse for meaningful assessments of agricultural productivity
beyond the most general estimations. Therefore, a different
approach was taken that reduced the soil data to a single principal
component (PC) using i.pca (GRASS Development Team, 2010),
which accounted for more than 95% of the variation in the soil
data. The Wright et al. (1958) soil maps were rapidly digitized
using points to capture the geometric relationships and provide
a basis for spline interpolation so that the articial boundaries
between soil polygons could be smoothed. Unfortunately, the
process is somewhat subjective, but the results provided an
additional means by which to distinguish between sites and the
general data area without making assumptions about particular
agricultural resources for which there is not sufcient data in this
case.
Each point in the digitized soil map was associated with
a database entry that contained the mean values for available N, P,
K, the mean pH, and a rank-order assessment of soil depth retrieved
from the published soil prole data (Baillie et al., 1993) which was
related back to the Wright et al. (1959) taxonomy. Measurements of
soil depth were not available for each soil prole in Baillie et al.
(1993) publication, but each soil type was distinguished partially
by soil depth, which was made available verbally with adjectives
like shallow, deep, moderately deep, and so on. Any soils described
as shallow received an arbitrary value of 0, moderately deep soils
received a value of 0.5, and deep soils received a value of 1.
Reducing the data to one PC has computational advantages and
highlights variation that makes it easier to distinguish between
known-site locations and the general data area if such distinctions
appear to exist at all without extrapolating from the available data
to specic agricultural practices.
4.4. Model parameters

Variable

Base Scale

Processing

Source(s)

Ruggedness
Slope
Distance
Nearest River
Soil PC

15 m
15 m
15 m

Standard score of DEM

GRASS r.slope.aspect
GRASS r.grow.distance

ASTER, SRTM
ASTER, SRTM
ASTER, SRTM

1:250 000

GRASS i.pca; transform

of avail. N, P, K, mean
pH, and soil depth
(95% variation)

Wright et al. (1958,

1959) and Baillie
et al. (1993)

Four signicant analytical decisions were made that comprise

the tuning parameters of the proposed model, other than the
selection of the model variables themselves, which can be modied to suit any project design and available data: sample area
per site, spatial resolution, CDF intervals, and the distance
decay function. The sizes of the areas around known-site locations
were an arbitrary decision informed by exploring the effect of
changing the sizes on the ability to distinguish between sites

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W.C. Carleton et al. / Journal of Archaeological Science 39 (2012) 3371e3385

Fig. 3. Variables included in the model. Boxplots show the middle 50 of the known-site data with whiskers extending to approximately 2s. The four variables shown above were
included in the modelling process and slope appears to be the least useful of them for distinguishing between known-sites and the rest of the data area, but it was included because
the CDF-to-boxplot ratio is relatively large (at least greater than the same ratio of the two variables that were excluded [see Fig. 4]). The smooth kernel-density estimates were
calculated using a rule-of-thumb approach (Sheather, 2004, 590).

and the general data area and previous experience with settlement analyses. A radius of 1 km around each known-site location
was employed as the sample area for each variable in the model.
The resolution of the input data was determined by the
maximum resolution of the composite DEM, which also dened
the maximum resolution of the output model. A 30 m resolution
was used in the calculation of the potential map for the purpose of
assessing the models performance because higher resolutions
are computationally expensive. Differences were observed, as
one would expect, between output models of different resolution,
but the same general areas were identied as high- and
low-potential by the modelling process. The combined effect of
the sample size and spatial resolution resulted in approximately
3450 observations per variable, per known-site with four
exceptions.

Four of the sites used in the study (sites 18, 36, 41, and 73) have
just over half the number of observations of the rest of the sites
because they fall very near the edge of the data area. If not for the
constraints imposed on the data area by the soils data-set, these
sites would have the same number of observations as the other
sites since we had data for the other variables. When comparing the
sites regarding the variables other than the soils data, they are not
in any way anomalous and do not represent locational archetypes
that differ signicantly from the other sites. There are no signicant
consequences for comparing the ECDFs estimated from samples of
different sizes in this case because the number of observations is
still very large (2000 or more), the sites do not appear to be outliers,
and the estimated ECDFs remain statistically signicant. In the
interest of including as many sites as seemed reasonable, we
included these four border sites despite the potential edge effect of

W.C. Carleton et al. / Journal of Archaeological Science 39 (2012) 3371e3385

3377

Fig. 4. Variables examined and excluded from the model. These two variables were excluded because none of the plots shown here suggest that these variables would be useful for
distinguishing between known-sites and the rest of the data area. Elevation is bimodal and, therefore, the boxplot comparison is somewhat less than useful, but the bimodality of
elevation values in the data area is likewise replicated in the known-site data suggesting only a very large scale distinction between known-sites caused by the difference in
elevation values between the Belize River Valley and the Vaca Plateau. The smooth kernel-density estimates were calculated using a rule-of-thumb approach (Sheather, 2004, 590).

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missing data based on the assumption that similarity in all of the

other data between these sites and the rest of the data-set suggests
that we should not expect signicant differences in the soils variable either.
The size of the joint-ECDF interval is partly dictated by the
spatial resolution of the data and sensible rounding of that data. It is
highly unlikely that fractional differences in degree of slope, for
example, would be relevant to most of the spatial decision-making
processes of interest to this study and rounding the nearest whole
degree is a self-evident processing task. The same could be said for
sub-metre differences in distances to landscape features and
resources. In raster data, the resolution of the cells also effectively
rounds the distance measurements to the resolution and so, in this
case, the distance to the nearest river is rounded to the nearest
30 m. Overall, the rounding and resolution informed the decision to
set the joint-ECDF interval in the model to account for 4 degrees
of slope (i.e., 4  1 step), 120 m of distance (i.e., 4  30 m cell
resolution step), 0.0884 standard score ruggedness, and 0.3754
soil PC value. The last two values are less intuitive than the rst two,
but they were calculated based on the mean difference between the
cells in the relevant raster maps, which constitutes the step value,
and set to the same 4-step interval as the slope and distance datasets. Lower step intervals were also explored and produced roughly
similar looking potential maps. A 4-step interval is obviously very
conservative considering that it suggests people were discriminating between locations on the basis of 120 m differences in the
distance to the nearest river, for example, but the results were
encouraging.
Distance decay functions allow for local conditions to be
weighted more heavily when considering the archaeological
potential of any given place. It seems unlikely that people occupying a particular parcel of land are going to be considering the
differences between the local environmental conditions and the
conditions at places some great distance away. More likely, people
will choose between relatively local options when attempting to
satisfy the demands of their locational archetype for the range of
spatially contextualized behaviour in which they want to engage.
Two distance functions were employed in this pilot study. First,
a boxcar function limited the number of sites to which each pixel
in the output raster was compared so that only the 18 nearest
known-sites were involved. The boxcar function was necessary
because calculating the probability of the union involves the
inclusioneexclusion principle and becomes computationally very
expensive beyond 18 sites given the computing power available at
the time the analysis was executed. Second, an exponential decay
function was used to weight the contribution of each site to the
nal probability of the union for each cell in the output raster.
Weighting the contributions ensures that local conditions are
considered to be the primary inuences on spatial decision-making
and that only relatively nearby extant sites were used as a basis for
comparison. An exponential function provides a smooth decay of
inuence as the distance between the past decision makers and the
sites they may have used as references for their locational archetype increases, but in another stage of the study a more detailed
assessment of the function will occur. The per-pixel approach of the
proposed model in combination with the distance-weighting
function makes the model inherently adaptive to local conditions,
which are not generally considered in other predictive models.
A nal note about the predictive model produced for this pilot
study regarding computation needs to be made. Computational
considerations encouraged the removal of zero-valued probabilities before the probability of the union for each cell in the output
raster map was calculated. Removing the zeros bore little consequence for the nal values according to initial observations
and simply noting the difference it would make in a union of

non-mutually exclusive countable outcomes, but strictly speaking

it resulted in a minimum estimate of the potential for each cell.
Observed differences for hundreds of individual cells were at the
fourth decimal place or beyond. Despite the negligible differences,
it must be pointed out that the real probability lies within an
interval dened on the low-end by the probability map actually
produced and on the high-end by Booles Inequality (see generally
Galambos and Simonelli, 1996). Therefore, while the probabilities
in the output model are conservative by design, the computational
adjustment makes the nal potential estimates slightly more
conservative by a hundredth of a percent or less.
4.5. Initial results
Fig. 5 displays the potential map for the study area around
Minanha and Fig. 6 presents a low-resolution model of the whole
data area. A few initial observations can be made and the pilot
study results are very promising. First, there are high and low
probability regions within the study area that appear to be spatially
dependant and readily distinguishable. The modelling technique is,
therefore, capable of isolating relatively high-potential regions
given the variables included in the analysis. Second, most of the
known-sites, all but two, are located on or near relatively highpotential pixels within the study area. Third, Minanha itself is
located near a small clump of high-potential pixels, which suggests

Fig. 5. Output model of the study area (30 m resolution).

W.C. Carleton et al. / Journal of Archaeological Science 39 (2012) 3371e3385

3379

4.6. Diagnostics

Fig. 6. Output model covering the data area (1 km resolution). See Fig. 2 for site
names. The following sites are in the hold-out category: 9, 12, 13, 53, 56, 57, 72.

that, despite the seemingly odd location for the site, it is located in
an area that ts some ancient Maya locational archetype for
settlements of that kind. Given the curious lack of obvious water
supply in the area around the site, it was expected that Minanha
would stand out against the model, but the evidence suggests quite
the opposite and Minanha may be located in the only area that t
the Maya locational archetype within a non-trivial distance of the
settlement. Finally, south of Minanha there is a large region of highpotential pixels that may partially explain the high density of
settlement related to Caracol Chase et al. (2011). However, before
the model can really be declared a success, some diagnostics need
to be performed.

Model diagnostics were performed using the known-site data

and a hold-out set of known-sites for validation. By comparing the
distributions of probabilities in the output map within the knownsite samples, i.e., pixels within 1 km of known-sites, with the
probability distribution for the whole data area, some sense of the
utility and accuracy of the model can be gained. Model accuracy
refers to how well the model describes the known-site data and the
utility of the model is evaluated by Kvammes Gain (1988, 329).
The probability distributions of the model within the data area,
within the sample areas of known-sites, and within the sample
areas of the hold-out set are compared in Fig. 7. A kernel-density
estimator (Silverman, 1986) with a rule-of-thumb (Sheather, 2004,
590) bandwidth estimator was used to estimate the probability
density functions (PDF) of the model output. Since the process is
computationally expensive, even when using parallel processing
and 4 modern cores, only a regularly spaced sample, at 1 km
intervals, of the whole data area totalling 5760 points was used in
order to estimate the PDF for the whole data area. Fig. 7 demonstrates that random draws from the data area PDF are much more
likely to result in zero, or near-zero, outcomes than random draws
from either the known-site PDF or the hold-out site PDF. The model
performed fairly well, though not astonishingly so, according to
a comparison of the PDFs, which is only one way to assess the
model results and in isolation is insufcient. Areas near sites are
more likely to contain high-potential pixels than elsewhere within
the data area.
Kvammes Gain (1988, 329) is a useful estimator of a predictive
models utility. A ratio of the percentage of the area predicted to
contain sites to the percentage of sites within the predicted areas
indicates how useful the model is for archaeological prospection.
The proposed modelling procedure does not result in binary
assessments, however, and relative potential is more relevant.
Therefore, the gain statistic was calculated for a given set of values
where each value was considered the break-point for distinguishing between high and low-potential pixels. Fig. 7 displays
a comparison between Kvammes Gain (K-Gain) for the knownsites, the hold-out sites, and a surface of Guassian-distributed
random variates sampled at the known-site locations. Due to the
high proportion of zero-valued cells in the data area there is a peak
in K-Gain when all non-zero-valued cells in the model output
map are considered high-potential. It may be that the highly

Fig. 7. Model performance assessment.

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W.C. Carleton et al. / Journal of Archaeological Science 39 (2012) 3371e3385

conservative nature of the pilot model is an accurate representation

of the probabilistic suitability of the data area for supporting
archaeological sites of the kind present in the known-site set, but it
may be more realistic to assume that the somewhat articial soil
data-set has exaggerated the number of cells in the output raster
that are signicantly unlike any known site. The rest of the K-Gain
signature may be more telling and suggests that somewhere
around a potential value of 0.4 the model achieves its highest
K-Gain in the case of the hold-out data and begins inclining toward
its highest K-Gain in the case of the known-sites. If a probability of
0.4 was used as a cut-off for determining which areas were
considered relatively high-potential within the data area, the
model achieves a very respectable K-Gain of 0.6e0.7. Higher
resolution output and better soils data may take up the slack and,
in the future, increase the K-Gain even further. On the other
hand, according to the data in the model, the areas with soil
depth values of zero, the readily visible regions in Fig. 8, contain
very few pixels related to the known-site sample so, while the
K-Gain could be articially high near the lowest potential values, it
may be an accurate reection of the spatial decision-making of the
Maya and only further testing would illuminate the situation. The
random surface K-Gain signature demonstrates what would be
expected if the model performed as poorly as possible.
4.6.1. Variable contributions to the model
Determining the degree to which each variable has contributed
to the potential estimates is an important extension of the
proposed modelling technique. Although it would be computationally expensive, and cloud computing is certainly the best way
forward for the proposed technique generally, the K-Gain signature
could be used for assessing the relative contributions of each
variable. Every combination of variables could be used and the
output models compared to one another with the K-Gain signatures. The combinations of variables, and the results from computations involving each variable individually, would reveal the
relative determinative strength of the variables through changes in
the K-Gain. Those variables that resulted in the greatest increases in
K-Gain overall would be the variables that contributed most
signicantly to the model. In addition to assessing the utility of
particular variables within the model, the K-Gain comparison may
also be used to assess a batch of variables that could be included in
the modelling process. In that way, comparing K-Gain signatures,

rather than only the statistical distributions, of variables could

effectively lter out variables of low predictive utility before a nal
model is generated. The K-Gain comparison process is out of the
scope of the present paper, but it is being developed as part of the
renement of the LAMAP technique.
4.6.2. Additional observations
Two observations require further explanation involving the
articial-looking areas in the southern half of the study area
probability surface (see Fig. 5) that are related to the soils data (see
Fig. 8) and how the modelling technique addresses the circularity
often inherent to archaeological prospection. It appears that the soil
depth variable is to blame for the articial shape of the areas (areas
labelled A and B in Fig. 8), but the potential assessment is not fully
determined by the depth variable (note the areas labelled C) and it
seems that the assessment is relatively accurate within the data
area. The soil PC data-set as a whole has served to simply constrain
the assessment, and a broadly similar probability surface was
generated without including the soil data at all (see Fig. 9), which
suggests that soil is only one of a number of variables that can be
used to evaluate the archaeological potential within the data area.
In addition, the soils data may also indicate differential site survival.
Shallow soil may have left Maya sites open to a greater degree of
weathering, which could be the reason that so few sites are found
on shallow soils. In this way, the model may be indicating how
likely it is that sites have survived. A better soil data-set would
improve the look of the probability surface, the performance of the
model, and allow us to explore the possibility that soil depth is also
related to taphonomy.
Circularity is a necessary component of any modelling process
and it bears on the LAMAP technique in a unique way. Observation
must always precede prediction since there is no other way to
reasonably go about trying to understand a given phenomenon so
the data used in the prediction is justiably part of the output.
However, the LAMAP techniques localized estimation means that,
in a sense, the model as a whole is only 1/18th circular in the case of
the Minanha pilot study. Since the 18 nearest known-sites are used
in the potential estimates for every Lo i, including those points that
are within the sample area of a known-site, at a maximum only one
known-site contributes to the potential estimate for itself. Therefore, while some circularity is just part of the scientic process,
because only your observations of a phenomenon can be used to

Fig. 8. The effect of the soil depth variable on the models output.

W.C. Carleton et al. / Journal of Archaeological Science 39 (2012) 3371e3385

3381

Fig. 9. The effect of including soil characteristics in the modelling process. The left image is of the model at 90 m resolution and without soil data. The right image is of the model
including the soil data and was calculated at 30 m resolution.

explain and predict the same phenomenon, the LAMAP technique is

a powerful data exploration tool with signicant explanatory and
predictive power in spite of some circularity.
4.7. Discussion
The pilot study modelling results can be compared to two other
published predictive models of Maya settlement behaviour in
Belize. First, a binary logistic model developed by Vaughn and
Crawford (2009) appeared to have identied aspect, greenness
(an index of vegetative health and density; Kauth and Thomas,
1976), and the distance from known-sites to arable land as the
primary predictive variables for Maya settlement location.
Although the study area of Vaughn and Crawfords (2009) model is
far north of the data area used for this analysis, some important
differences stand out. According to the evaluation of the variables
prior to the modelling performed for the analysis presented herein,
aspect is not useful for distinguishing between sites and the data
area. Vaughn and Crawford found that known-sites appeared to be
located at some distance from, rather than proximal to, arable land,
while this model indicates that certain soils, which could be characterized as poor for agriculture, were preferentially avoided since
very shallow soils have been marked as low-potential. The
remaining variable identied by Vaughn and Crawford would have
been a poor choice for the study area because so much anthropogenic landscape change, in the form of forest clearance and hydroengineering, has occurred in the data area that any modern
assessment of vegetative health is likely to reect modern agricultural practices, and would change seasonally as a result.
Greenness may be indicative in some areas of Maya archaeological
resources due to some effect on the modern vegetation (Vaughn
and Crawford, 2009, 550), but the use of random locations
instead of known non-site locations in Vaughn and Crawfords
study, and their underwhelming model validation (Vaughn and
Crawford, 2009, 551e552), suggests that the logit model failed to
produce clearly meaningful results anyhow. The only comparison
that may be of interest, considering the difculties of contrasting

the two modelling approaches, seems to be that aspect has little to

do with the locations of known-sites in the data area.
The second predictive model against which the present study
can be contrasted was created by Ford et al. (2009) and involves the
Belize River Valley, which is immediately north of the Minanha
study area and is partially encompassed by the data area of the
present analysis. The modelling results presented here support
Ford and Clarks ndings that distance to water (rivers), slope, and
soil characteristics play signicant roles in the Maya locational
archetype(s) for suitable settlement locations. In addition to those
variables, ruggedness appears to have been an important factor in
the locational behaviour of the ancient Maya. Although it is not
explicitly stated, it can be assumed that the survey tracts employed
in Ford et al. (2009) include known non-site locations (i.e.,
anywhere that a site is not indicated was still surveyed), which
makes their application of WofE better than most applications of
the logit models. The proposed modelling technique appears to
account for the broad patterns observed in Ford et al. (2009) while
more elegantly incorporating local variation and did not require the
same intensity of settlement survey. Nevertheless, the validation of
Ford et al. (2009) indicates that it is a useful predictive assessment
and the ndings of this pilot study indicate that the same set of
variables were important considerations affecting ancient Maya
locational behaviour.
Another recent landscape-oriented archaeological analysis by
Chase et al. (2011) can be related to the results of the pilot model.
South of Ixchel, and south of the study area, is where the northern
extent of the Caracol habitation and agricultural cluster lies. The
areal extent of dense terracing and related habitation sites that are
part of the Caracol cluster have been mapped using high-resolution
LiDAR remote sensing and the maximum areal extent of the mapped terraces within Chase et al.s (2011) study area is shown in
relation to the data area model output in Fig. 10. According to the
model output, the Caracol cluster occupies lands that t the ancient
Maya locational archetype(s) very well and these results provide an
interesting regional context for the model of the area around
Minanha.

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W.C. Carleton et al. / Journal of Archaeological Science 39 (2012) 3371e3385

constellation of variables was found to be predictive of terraces

themselves (see Bevan and Conolly, 2011, for ecological modelling
of agricultural terraces) then those variables could be included in
the modelling process. Overall, some of Minanhas local regional
importance may be due to the apparent consanguinity between the
sites surroundings and the relevant locational archetype of the
ancient Maya, but the site and its agricultural satellites do not t the
apparent locational archetypes as well as other sites.
4.9. The potential problem with dynamic landscapes

Fig. 10. The extent of the terraced areas around the Caracol habitation cluster
compared to the model results (1 km resolution). 1. Minanha, 2. Waybil, 3. S.G.D, 4.
Camp 6, 5. Starkey Hill, 6. Ixchel, 7. Cohune, 8. Ceiba, 9. Tzimin Kax, 10. Hatzcap Ceel, 11.
Cahal Clinil, 12. Cahal Pichik, 13. Retiro, 14. Caracol, 15. Chapayal, 16. Conchita, 17.
Ramonal, 18. Mountain Cow, 19. Round Hole Bank, 20. Actun Balam.

4.8. The implications for Minanha

Choosing Minanha as a pilot study area for the proposed
modelling process has highlighted some important features of the
site with respect to its local landscape and perhaps goes some way
toward a better understanding of the settlement. According to the
model (see Fig. 5) Minanha is located on an island of low-moderate
potential surrounded by a low-potential region. Two important
points can be made about the settlement when considering its
position in the potential landscape.
First, the development of the settlement in its particular location, on a local ridge that trends SWeNE and has a relatively low
ruggedness, may be due to the local landscapes congruence with
a Maya locational archetype regarding the appropriate sorts of
places to build administrative and ceremonial centres. Highpotential areas were indicated for lands that are high and dry in
Ford et al. (2009) as well. The area surrounding the sites epicentre,
on the other hand, does not conform to the archetype(s) identied
by the modelling process, which was indicated by the low-potential
assessment for those lands. It seems, when considering the model
results, that given enough time and a certain local population
density, the place in which Minanhas epicentre is located would
have been an obvious, or even inevitable, local choice for such a site
when nearby known-sites are used a reference.
Second, the Contreras Valley, a densely terraced and settled
valley 1.5 km southeast of Minanha (see Fig. 5), is judged by the
model to be low-potential. Without many other similar locations in
the known-site data-set, Contreras appears to be anomalous and
was evaluated accordingly. If points within the Contreras Valley
were added to the model, and the potential map recalculated, the
valley, and other similar valleys, would receive higher ratings with
the addition of the new information. Moreover, since many of the
sites in the known-site set likely refer to epicentres, like Minanha,
rather than to farm-steads, the locational archetype for regions like
Contreras was not an obvious signal in the data. It is also interesting
to note that the extensive terracing of the Contreras Valley suggests
that heavy landscape modication was required in order to make
the area conform to the appropriate archetype and if some

Of course, it should be noted that the data employed in this

analysis represents strictly contemporary environmental conditions. Anthropogenic and natural changes to the landscape have
occurred since the occupation of the Maya settlements in the dataset. These processes were, and are, ongoing so it is also important to
keep in mind that the landscape was changing even while the
ancient Maya were occupying the study region. We anticipate two
consequences for this study, and all landscape analyses, that follow
on from such geophysical dynamism: 1) the degree to which we
can attribute a particular signal directly to ancient locational
decision-making is somewhat reduced and 2) in highly dynamic
landscapes we expect that any predictive modelling will suffer
reduced utility. Both points can be addressed by noting that some
signal may still be present and if a variable in question turns out to
be useful for assessing archaeological potential then it must have
been relevant to the locational decision-making process of the
people occupying the landscape under study, even if it was relevant
through a mediating variable that was not included in the study. If
the landscape has changed substantially, it seems unlikely that a set
of modern variables would account for the locations of archaeological sites at all unless sampling bias or taphonomic issues can be
invoked as a signal generating mechanism, which was not the case
in our analysis as far as we can tell.
5. Conclusion
The proposed modelling technique takes account of spatial
variability with respect to physiographic and resource-oriented
landscape characteristics and the spatial behaviour of humans
within their local environs. There is no need to violate statistical
assumptions or gloss over important mathematical problems in
order to produce an archaeological potential model that can be
easily expanded and adapted to any region. The proposed models
simplicity and robustness allows for straightforward interpretations, which illustrates the techniques utility for both spatial data
exploration and archaeological prospection. The LAMAP technique
also addresses issues of scale and decision-making perspective in
an unprecedentedly graceful way. Using this technique allows us to
better understand landscape use and locational behaviour, which
has the most useful byproduct of more effective archaeological
prospection. It is sincerely hoped that other researchers will
employ the proposed model in numerous regions and contribute to
the theoretical and technical development of an archaeologically
specic, spatially and temporally contextualized, model of
humanelandscape interaction.
Acknowledgements
This research for this paper was funded by an Alphawood
Foundation Grant and we gratefully acknowledge their support. In
addition we thank Dr Michelle Boue for her review and clarication
of the mathematical notation. Valuable commentary on an earlier
draft was provided by the two anonymous reviewers and the
papers editor. All remaining errors are our own.

W.C. Carleton et al. / Journal of Archaeological Science 39 (2012) 3371e3385

3383

Appendix A. Sites used in the model

Table A.1
All sites used in the modelling process. Acquisition refers to whether the site coordinates were obtained with a GPS, by DIGITization, or from a REFerence without further
specication. If the site coordinates were obtained by digitization, and the reference image is known, the name of the image is included in the Source column.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8a
8b
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42a
42b
42c
42d
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65

Site Name

Acquisition

Source

Reference

Yalbac
Site 28
Young Gal
Happy Home
Banana Bank
Mount Hope
Barton Ramie
Mount Lookout
Spanish Lookout
Camelote
Ontario
Blackman Eddy
Floral Park
Pol Sak Pak
North Caracol Farm
Baking Pot
Esperanza
Yaxox
El Pilar
Bullet Tree Falls
Alta Vista
Buenavista del Cayo
Xualcanil
Pooks Hill
Actun Tunichil Muknal
Actun Nak Beh
Cahal Uitz Na
Pacbitun
San Felipe
Negroman
Zubin
Nohoch Ek
Chaa Creek
Chan
Las Ruinas/Arenal
Uchentzub
Site 29
Buenavista
Callar Creek
Xunantunich
Succotz
Soccotz
Actun Chapat
Tipu
Guacamayo
Cahal Pech
Dos Chambitos
Vaca Falls
Minanha/ Mucnal Tunich
Waybil
S.G.D.
Camp 6
Starkey Hill
Ixchel
Tzimin Kax
Cohune
Chaquistero
Ceiba
Chapayal
Dos Tumbas
Retiro
Puchituk
Caracol
Conchita
Ramonal
Cahal Pichik
Mountain Cow
Hatzcap Ceel
Cahal Clinil

DIGIT
DIGIT
DIGIT
DIGIT
DIGIT
DIGIT
DIGIT
DIGIT
DIGIT
REF
REF
REF
GPS
REF
REF
REF
REF
DIGIT
DIGIT
DIGIT
REF
DIGIT
REF
REF
REF
REF
REF
REF
DIGIT
DIGIT
REF
REF
REF
REF
DIGIT
DIGIT
REF
DIGIT
REF
REF
REF
REF
REF
REF
REF
DIGIT
REF
DIGIT
GPS
GPS
DIGIT
GPS
DIGIT
GPS
DIGIT
REF
REF
REF
DIGIT
REF
REF
REF
REF
REF
REF
REF
DIGIT
DIGIT
DIGIT

Fig. 14.1
Fig. 6.1, p. 124
MARI Section Map
MARI Section Map
MARI Section Map
MARI Section Map
Fig. 7.1, p. 158
MARI Section Map
MARI Section Map

Ashmore et al. (1981)

Rice and Puleston (1981)
Blom et al. (1940)
Blom et al. (1940)
Blom et al. (1940)
Blom et al. (1940)
Hammond (1981)
Blom et al. (1940)
Blom et al. (1940)
Iannone (2003)
Iannone (2003)
Brown and Witschey, 2010
Brown and Witschey, 2010
Iannone (2003)
Iannone (2003)
Brown and Witschey, 2010
Iannone (2003)
Ford (2005)
Ford (2005)
Blom et al. (1940)
Iannone (2003)
Ford (2004)
Webster et al. (2004)
Helmke (2009)
Brown and Witschey, 2010
Brown and Witschey, 2010
Brown and Witschey, 2010
Brown and Witschey, 2010
Blom et al. (1940)
Blom et al. (1940)
Webster et al. (2004)
Webster et al. (2004)
Webster et al. (2004)
Webster et al. (2004)
Demarest et al. (2004)
Hammond (1981)
Rice and Puleston (1981)
Demarest et al. (2004)
Webster et al. (2004)
Brown and Witschey, 2010
Webster et al. (2004)
Ruppert and Denison (1943)
Brown and Witschey, 2010
Webster et al. (2004)
Webster et al. (2004)
Demarest et al. (2004)
Webster et al. (2004)
Blom et al. (1940)
Iannone (n.d.)
Iannone (n.d.)
Blom et al. (1940)
Iannone (n.d.)
Blom et al. (1940)
Iannone (n.d.)
Hammond (1981)
Chase and Chase (2004)
Chase and Chase (2004)
Chase and Chase (2004)
Blom et al. (1940)
Chase and Chase (2004)
Chase and Chase (2004)
Chase and Chase (2004)
Brown and Witschey, 2010
Chase and Chase (2004)
Ford (2004)
Chase and Chase (2004)
Ford (2004)
Brown and Witschey, 2010
Blom et al. (1940)

4
4
4
4
4
4

Google Earth

Google Earth
El Pilar Report
El Pilar Report
MARI Section Map 4
Nat. Geog. Land of the Maya

Google Earth
Google Earth
Google Earth
Google Earth
MARI Section Map 4
MARI Section Map 4

p. 305
Fig. 7.1, p. 158
p. 305
Google Earth

Google Earth

p. 305
MARI Section Map 4

MARI Section Map 4

MARI Section Map 4
Fig. 7.1, p. 158

MARI Section Map 4

Google Earth

Nat. Geog. Land of the Maya

MARI Section map 4
MARI Section Map 4

(continued on next page)

3384

W.C. Carleton et al. / Journal of Archaeological Science 39 (2012) 3371e3385

Table A.1 (continued )

66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73

Site Name

Acquisition

Source

Reference

Actun Balam
Round Hole Bank
D.S.
Rockshelter with platforms
Scattered Low Mounds
Saacholil Ruin
Esperanza
Xnaheb

DIGIT
REF
DIGIT
REF
REF
REF
DIGIT
DIGIT

Fig. 7.1, p. 158

Hammond (1981)
Chase and Chase (2004)
Blom et al. (1940)
Dunham et al. (1994)
Dunham et al. (1994)
Dunham et al. (1994)
Blom et al. (1940)
Ford (2004)

Appendix A. Supplementary data

Supplementary data related to this article can be found online at
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2012.05.022.

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