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Domestic campsites and cyber landscapes in the Rocky Mountains

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Laura L. Scheiber  and
Judson Byrd Finley
Laura L. Scheiber
Affiliation:
1Department of Anthropology, Student Building 130, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA (email: scheiber@indiana.edu)
Judson Byrd Finley
Affiliation:
2Department of Earth Sciences, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN 38152, USA (email: jfinley2@memphis.edu)
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Abstract

The dwellings of prehistoric Native North Americans are amongst the hardest archaeological structures to find and characterise – they leave only a shallow ring of stones. But the authors show that, when recorded to modern levels of precision, these tipi-stances contain a wealth of information. The stone rings are mapped in detail by hand, and located by GPS, their hearths are located by fluxgate survey and sampled for radiocarbon dating, and the results displayed in layered maps on GIS. Different social groups had different floor plans, so that, even where artefacts are missing, the movement of peoples can be dated and mapped. The results also bring to the fore the great cultural value of these, the dominant monument types of Bighorn Canyon National Recreational Area.

Keywords

North American PlainsCentral Rocky MountainsGISGPSstone circlesarchitecturemulti-scalarhouseholdstechnologylandscapehunter-gathererscontract archaeologySection 106 compliance

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Type
Research
Information
Antiquity , Volume 84 , Issue 323 , March 2010 , pp. 114 - 130
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2010

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