William A Lovis – författare

Marking the Land investigates how hunter-gatherers use physical landscape markers and environmental management to impose meaning on the spaces they occupy. The land is full of meaning for hunter-gatherers. Much of that meaning is inherent in natural phenomena, but some of it comes from modifications to the landscape that hunter-gatherers themselves make. Such alterations may be intentional or unintentional, temporary or permanent, and they can carry multiple layers of meaning, ranging from practical signs that provide guidance and information through to less direct indications of identity or abstract, highly symbolic signs of sacred or ceremonial significance. This volume investigates the conditions which determine the investment of time and effort in physical landscape marking by hunter-gatherers, and the factors which determine the extent to which these modifications are symbolically charged. Considering hunter-gatherer groups of varying sociocultural complexity and scale, Marking the Land provides a systematic consideration of this neglected aspect of hunter-gatherer adaptation and the varied environments within which they live.

Marking the Land investigates how hunter-gatherers use physical landscape markers and environmental management to impose meaning on the spaces they occupy. The land is full of meaning for hunter-gatherers. Much of that meaning is inherent in natural phenomena, but some of it comes from modifications to the landscape that hunter-gatherers themselves make. Such alterations may be intentional or unintentional, temporary or permanent, and they can carry multiple layers of meaning, ranging from practical signs that provide guidance and information through to less direct indications of identity or abstract, highly symbolic signs of sacred or ceremonial significance. This volume investigates the conditions which determine the investment of time and effort in physical landscape marking by hunter-gatherers, and the factors which determine the extent to which these modifications are symbolically charged. Considering hunter-gatherer groups of varying sociocultural complexity and scale, Marking the Land provides a systematic consideration of this neglected aspect of hunter-gatherer adaptation and the varied environments within which they live.

Thisvolume deals with the pressing issue of uncertainty in archaeological modeling.Detecting where and when uncertainty is introduced to the modeling process iscritical, as are strategies for minimizing, reconciling, or accommodating suchuncertainty. Included chapters provide unique perspectives on uncertainty inarchaeological modeling, ranging in both theoretical and methodologicalorientation. The strengths and weaknesses of various identification andmitigation techniques are discussed, in particular sensitivity analysis. Thechapters demonstrate that for archaeological modeling purposes, there is noquick fix for uncertainty; indeed, each archaeological model requires intensiveconsideration of uncertainty and specific applications for calibration andvalidation. As very few such techniques have been problematized in a systematicmanner or published in the archaeological literature, this volume aims toprovide guidance and direction to other modelers in the field by distillingsome basic principles for model testing derived from insight gathered in thecase studies presented. Additionally, model applications and their attendantuncertainties are presented from distinct spatio-temporal contexts and willappeal to a broad range of archaeological modelers. This volume will also be ofinterest to non-modeling archaeologists, as consideration of uncertainty wheninterpreting the archaeological record is also a vital concern for thedevelopment of non-formal (or implicit) models of human behavior in the past.