Monumental Architecture, Households, and Archaeo-Geophysics in the American Southeast and Midwest

摘要

The exploration of space and architecture has always been a core part of archaeological inquiry. However, broad-scale excavations that reveal patterns of houses, construction stages of mounds and the like are becoming less frequent in many areas of the world for various financial and political reasons. However, to understand the built environment these types of datasets are critical. Such information not only allows archaeologists to make, for example, inquiries about the timing of mound construction, but also allows them to place such monuments in their proper context. Furthermore, these data allow for an exploration of social space, that is, what is the nature of residence patterns and what connects various features and families across a community. Although excavation at this scale is rapidly becoming a rarity, remote sensing on a massive scale is becoming more frequent, sometimes covering whole landscapes (e.g. Gaffney et al., 2012). Such views not only permit us to find the places of intensive human activity, but also allow for the exploration of the spaces between.