Unbinding Diversity Measures in Archaeology Using GIS

Abstract

Thirty years ago, a seminal volume drew together leaders in the field who were working on quantifying diversity in archaeological assemblages, Quantifying Diversity in Archaeology (Leonard and Jones, eds. 1989). While several papers identified space as a critical factor in structuring diversity, this concept was largely unaddressed and the analyses presented remained intrasite in scope. This was certainly due, in part, to the analytic and conceptual limitations of spatial analysis in archaeology in the late 1980s. Quantifying Diversity in Archaeology came out just before the geospatial revolution hit full swing in the field and the capabilities of today’s geospatial technologies were unimaginable at the time. Now, thirty years later, the desire to analyze diversity across multiple sites from entire regions is easy to realize computationally. Nevertheless, key challenges identified in the original volume about quantifying diversity persist. While one can measure variation to identify diversity, we still need to understand what that means and how the categories we use to compute diversity are related to actual variation in past behavior(s) of interest. We explore various geospatial approaches that can help untether diversity analyses from traditional site-based frameworks. We argue that centering the experiences of the people producing and, importantly, perceiving the variation extant in their landscape is essential, as these personal experiences structured the past diversity we aim to study.