Ethan Brooks
Pronouns: he/him
Research Mentor(s): Erina Baci
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Anthropology / LSA
Program:
Authors:
Session: Session 2: 10:00 am – 10:50 am
Poster: 50
Abstract
Kosovo is home to a rich and dynamic archaeological record that spans millennia. The results presented in this poster are a portion of a larger, ongoing, project aimed at gaining a better understanding of settlement and mobility in Kosovo throughout time and contextualize these patterns within the broader archaeological record of the Balkans, a region that is often presented as a corridor between “East” and “West” that people travel through and not within. Geospatial Information Systems (GIS) are used to investigate settlement patterns and how these patterns changed over time within our study area. This research employs a multiscalar approach, looking not only at changes in settlement through time across multiple scales. This particular branch of the large project outlined above has two goals 1) to add to and refine an existing database encompassing over 800 sites in Kosovo and 2) to test existing methodologies for examining site distribution and settlement patterns using GIS and evaluate how our results are impacted when new data is added or when the quality of data is increased. This is done through detailed data curation and editing of an extensive site database and spatial analyses via the Nearest Neighbor, Kernel Density, and Ripley’s K tools in ArcGIS Pro. Throughout my geospatial analysis, 318 new sites have been added to the database and over 800 previous sites have been revised. However, this research is still on going. We suspect that in addition to social phenomena influencing settlement patterns over time, common drivers influencing how and where people settle in the landscape includes geography, geology, and access to water.
