Memory at your feet: Modeling the agency of past trails

Abstract

Landscape archaeologists rely on the use of least-cost paths to explore and reconstruct movement patterns in the past. An important factor seldom incorporated in these studies is the possibility of earlier paths influencing later ones. This is due, in no small part, to the inability of current least-cost path algorithms to incorporate such an effect in an efficient manner. Once the effect of earlier paths is considered, the order in which sites, or other features, are connected is likely to play an important role in the resulting network. In this paper, a simple Python network simulation package (NetSim) is presented. This package, includes a new accumulated cost surface algorithm, influence weighted distance transform or IWDT, that allows the effect of previous paths to affect later paths when reconstructing possible least-cost paths networks among various locations. The simulation is illustrated using a simple case study from island of Mallorca, where the range of possible networks between different types of Talayotic (Iron Age) sites are explored.