Visibility Studies in Archaeology: A Review and Case Study

Mark W Lake and Patricia E Woodman
Additional contact information
Mark W Lake: Institute of Archaeology, University College London, 31-34 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PY, England
Patricia E Woodman: School of Continuing Education, University of Reading, London Road, Reading RG1 5AQ, England

Environment and Planning B, 2003, vol. 30, issue 5, 689-707

Abstract: This paper describes the history and current state of archaeological visibility studies. The first part is a survey of both GIS (geographic information systems) and non-GIS studies of visibility by archaeologists, which demonstrates how advances in GIS visibility studies have tended to recapitulate, albeit over a compressed timescale, theoretically driven developments in non-GIS studies. The second part presents an example of the kind of methodological development required for the use of GIS to contribute to the agenda set by certain strands of a more humanistic archaeology. An algorithm developed to retrieve various summaries of the inclination at which points on the horizon are visible from a specified viewpoint was applied to nineteen recumbent stone circles in the Grampian region of Scotland. The results suggest that these summaries provide a useful tool for ‘unpacking’ what archaeologists mean when they claim that the topographic setting of certain stone circles creates an ‘impression of circularity’.

Date: 2003
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/b29122 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envirb:v:30:y:2003:i:5:p:689-707

DOI: 10.1068/b29122

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment and Planning B
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().