QUANTIFYING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ARCHEOLOGICAL SITES AND HYDROLOGIC FEATURES: A CASE STUDY

Abstract

Proximity to a water source has been a consistent environmental variable used in predictive modeling of archeological site locations. Currently, there is limited research that has been done to quantify the relationship between water sources and archeological site locations. The Sand Hollow area, located in Southern Utah, has had many modern construction projects consisting of roadway expansions, a reservoir, and golf courses. These projects required compliance with Section 106 consisting of mitigation measures using archeological excavation. With these required excavations, the Sand Hollow area provides a robust dataset of archeological sites. Thus, the Sand Hollow area is used as a case study to research if there is a correlation between hydrologic features and archeological sites using GIS. Sand Hollow reservoir was constructed in June 2000. A Digital Elevation Model (DEM) was downloaded from February 2000 to remove impacts from modern construction of the reservoir on the derived hydrologic features. To quantify the relationship between archeological sites and hydrologic features, buffer zones at 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, and >500 meters from hydrologic features are created. The chi-squared test is used to compare the observed to the expected relationship between archeological sites and hydrologic features. Through these methods, archeological sites were found to have a significant relationship to hydrologic features within the study area. The archeological dataset from Shifting Sands is divided into three time periods of Archaic, Anasazi, and Late Prehistoric. Using the chi-squared test, the Anasazi period has the most significant relationship to hydrologic features.