So far this semester, I have made progress on many fronts, not the least of which involves my thesis research. Anyone reading my blog regularly will have gotten a taste for my own internal dialog in navigating the theoretical hurdles inherent in conducting independent research. In the past few weeks this internal dialogue has transitioned into the begging stages of writing my thesis. In the spirit of innovation I have decided to try an experiment. Today I will be writing my abstract and introduction in the form of a blog post. There are multiple points to this exercise. As the primary audience for this blog is my fellow innovation fellows, I am hoping to get some feedback on the status, intent and general theoretical stance of my thesis. I won’t be subjecting you all to the rest of my thesis in this manner, but writing the introduction first is new to me and I feel that the introduction, if well written, should be well received by you, my audience. So, here we go:
Abstract:
This study utilizes an integrated remote sensing approach to augment settlement pattern survey in archaeological research in the Yalahau region in Northern Quintana Roo, Mexico. It has long been acknowledged that archaeology has harbored an inherent bias towards the “center” of things. In recent years, some archaeologists have shifted to a more landscape and settlement pattern oriented approach for archaeological research. Coupled with this has been an increased interest in human-environment interaction within archaeology. The Yalahau region of Northern Quintana Roo has a long history of human occupation as well as a sensitive combination of environments. Coasts, wetlands, high forests, low forests, agricultural fields and towns all sit above a porous karst geology. Interactions between humans and the environment can, and do in the right circumstances, produce impacts which may remain detectable many hundreds or thousands of years later. By utilizing various sensors (LiDAR, GeoEye, Landsat VII and VIII, other imagery) and collection methods (satellite, aerial) as well as processing (band combinations, tasseled cap) and cross referencing the data it is possible to generate a signature which strongly correlates with the presence of evidence of prehistoric occupation. Field verification of these identified signatures was conducted to assess the “Ground Truth” of the presence or absence of archaeological material. The results of this investigation are presented together with other regional settlement pattern data in order to assess the status of a number of methodological and archaeological questions as well as to supplement regional data already available.
The primary question I have for my abstract is what specifically should I cut to retain the most information about what is actually in my paper, in the event that it needs to be cut for to satisfy word count restrictions?
Introduction:
Investigations into prehistory in Quintana Roo date back to the very first decades of the colonization of Mexico. John Lloyd Stephens brought the Yucatan back to US populations, publishing hundreds of carvings and illustrations, as well as a compelling travelogue narrative of his years of journeying throughout present day Yucatan and Quintana Roo. Human occupation in the region dates to the archaic or earlier and many very early Pre-Classic period Maya sites exist throughout the region. Maya groups still occupied some sites through contact with the Spanish in the 1500’s and many Maya reside there today. The modern environment of Yucatan and Quintana Roo consists of both High and Low tropical forests and wetlands sitting atop a porous, karstic ridge. The tropical environment makes site discovery challenging, with visibility often limited to a few tens of meters walking on the forest floor.
As archaeological investigations have shifted away from the center/site paradigm, and towards “Landscape Archaeology”, emphasis has expanded on studies of “Hinterlands” and other euphemistic terms for sites which are investigated not for their grandiosity but for the stunningly every-day nature of the findings. These types of investigations are multi-scalar and emphasize center-periphery interactions as well as human-environment interactions. For these types of investigations understanding the distribution of human occupation on a landscape becomes a key component of interpreting the archaeological record.
This increased emphasis in human environmental interaction in the past has coincided with the current surge in modern environmental research. In fact, archaeologists around the world have been contributing unique knowledge about past human environment interactions to the current global political debate on climate change. Within archaeology, this has coupled with an increase in research into detecting human environmental interaction in the past. This has also lead to a funding boom, for example the National Science Foundation has made available grants for researchers investigating “Coupled Human Natural Systems” both in the present and past and NOAA has funded human-environment interaction research in Yalahau in previous field seasons. It is becoming clear that among archaeology and environmental science that human beings can and do have lasting impacts on the environments in which we live, which can remain detectable for many hundreds of years.
This thesis addresses whether it is possible to remotely detect archaeological sites under tropical forest canopy in the Yalahau region. By combining a variety of sensors such as Airborne LiDAR, Landsat VII and VIII in addition to with previous survey results it is possible to develop a signature of known archaeological sites in the region which can be used to detect previously undocumented or unrecorded sites. I use these terms explicitly, as in the course of my investigations it became apparent that there is, in fact, nothing new under the sun. Every site which I field verified in the course of this thesis was known, in many cases long known, by the local informants that eventually brought me to the sites. In the end, they were the heroes of yet another field project in this region. Finally, I examine the results of this program of remote sensing and verification in the context of the previous field survey upon which my own research is based. Together, both the previous survey and my own remote sensing based research are much stronger and provide a more complete picture of settlement pattern than either method is able to produce alone.
For the introduction I have the opposite issue. What would you, the reader like to see expanded? Also, more broadly: What questions would you, the reader be expecting to have answered at the conclusion of the paper this is introducing? As most of you are non archaeologists, I want to understand the questions a non archaeologist would have reading this work, in order to increase the utility of this research for those in other fields wishing to incorporate archaeological data into more contemporarily oriented research programs.