spatial archaeology

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

an approach within archaeology that analyses the spatial distribution of artefacts, features, and sites at scales ranging from the arrangement of objects within a single room to the distribution of settlements across a regional landscape, using quantitative methods, geographic information systems, and spatial statistics to identify patterns of human activity, movement, and organisation that are not apparent from individual finds considered in isolation; spatial archaeology emerged as a formal methodology in the 1970s influenced by locational analysis in geography and has since developed extensive methodological tools for identifying activity areas within sites, reconstructing the organisation of prehistoric settlements, and modelling the spatial logic of past human decisions about where to live, work, and dispose of material