CPAS Archaeological GIS Workshop December 2009 Chengdu, China

Dr. Jason Ur Department of Anthropology Harvard University

Lab 8: Basic Spatial Analysis

This lab will introduce you to some basic methods of analysis, in this case all based on distance. In this case, we will perform these analyses on a dataset of sites of the Early Bronze Age (ca. 2600-2000 BC) and Iron Age (ca. 900-600 BC) in northern Mesopotamia (modern NE Syria). I. Setup A. Load the tbs.mxd ArcMap document from the L08_analysis folder. This is a map of the Tell Beydar Survey area.

II. Distance: How far away are features? A. Buffers of defined distance. Suppose you wish to know what land lies within 3 km of sites of the Early Bronze Age. Ethnographic studies suggest that sedentary farmers in the Near East generally cultivate within 3 km of their settlements. 1. Open ArcToolbox and select Analysis ToolsProximity Buffer. 2. The Input features are the EBA Sites; 3. For the Output Feature Class, call the shapefile eba_buffer.shp and put it in the L08_analysis folder; 4. For Distance, select Linear Unit and input 3000 meters; 5. Leave other options as is, and click OK. When the process is finished, click Close. 6. There will be a lot of overlap for the features in the resulting shapefile. You might set the fill color for this layer to transparent to see how they overlap. B. Buffers with distance derived from a field. The 3 km arbitrary buffer is interesting in that it suggests that if each settlements residents cultivated the 3 km radius around it, there would be overlaps (and potential conflict) with neighbors. But not all settlements would need to cultivate that much. We could estimate the cultivated area based on a population estimate derived from the sites size. Here well make some assumptions about population density, annual cereal consumption, and field productivity to calculate the radius of a settlements agricultural sustaining area. 1. Add a field to the EBA Sites layer to contain the sites area a) Open the attribute table for EBA Sites and select OptionsAdd Field b) Call the field area_ha and make it of type double. Click OK. c) Right-click on the area_ha field heading and select Calculate Geometry (1) The Property to calculate is Area (you might note the other properties that you can calculate for features); (2) Use the coordinate system of the data source; (3) The Units should be Hectares [ha]. 1

CPAS Archaeological GIS Workshop, Chengdu Dec 2009

Lab 8: Basic Spatial Analysis

d) Click OK. The area_ha field will be populated by the area of each feature in hectares (1 ha = 10,000 square meters). 2. Add a field to the EBA Sites layer to contain a population estimate. a) Open the attribute table for EBA Sites and select OptionsAdd Field b) Call the field pop_100, leave it as a Short Integer, and click OK; c) Right-click on the pop_100 field heading and select Field Calculator; d) In the Field Calculator window, it should say pop_100 = above the bottom box. Type inside that box [area_ha]*100 . This will multiply the field containing the area in hectares by 100, because Near Eastern archaeologists often assume that ancient sites held 100 persons per settled hectare. 3. Add a field to contain the radius of the estimated sustaining area a) As you did above, add a field called sust_rad but make it of type double. b) Right-click its field heading and select Field Calculator; c) Well assume that one person eats one hectares worth (10,000 m2) of cereal each year. So population x 10,000 equals the total cultivated area. Well assume that the farmers cultivated a circular area around each site. Since Area 2 = r , to calculate the radius of a circle that would feed each sites population, we must: (1) multiply population x 10,000 to get the sustaining area; (2) Divide the area by or a simplified 3.1415; (3) Take the square root of that number. (4) Therefore, in the Field Calculator window, sust_rad will equal Sqr ( [pop_100]*10000/3.1415 ) d) Click OK. The sust_rad column will now have the radius in meters. Close the Attributes window. 4. Create buffers using the value in the field sust_rad a) As in Section II.A above, run the Buffer tool in ArcToolbox; b) EBA Sites will be the input features; c) Name your output sustaining area shapefile; d) For the Distance, check Field and select sust_rad; e) Leave all other fields as is and click OK, and then Close when the process is completed. 5. In these buffers, note that there is much less overlap when we take into consideration population. Indeed, with the assumptions we have made regarding population size, annual individual consumption, annual field yield, etc., the settlements in the Beydar area should have been self sustaining in the Early Bronze Age. C. Distance Grids: Generate a grid where the pixel value represents distance from a point or set of points. In this case, we will measure distance from sites of the Early Bronze Age. 2

CPAS Archaeological GIS Workshop, Chengdu Dec 2009

Lab 8: Basic Spatial Analysis

1. This method uses the Spatial Analyst toolbar. In the toolbar, select Options On the General tab, set the Analysis Mask to the Survey Limits layer. On the Extent tab, set the Analysis extent to Same as Layer Survey Limits. This will limit the output analyses to only the area within the survey boundaries. 2. In the Spatial Analyst menu, select Distance-Straight Line a) Distance to: should be EBA Sites; b) Leave maximim distance blank and set Output cell size to 10 (meters); c) Put the Output raster on your U: drive in an appropriate folder. d) Click OK 3. The output grid is automatically classified to a default setting. You can override this to classify the pixels in 1 km intervals a) Open the Layer Properties and go to the Symbology tab; b) In the Classification section, click the Classify button; c) Set the Method to Defined Interval and the Interval Size to 1000; d) Click OK. 4. Reclassify the distance raster layer to estimate areas of pasture landuse in the EBA. Here well make a very general assumption that land beyond 5 km from any site was not being cultivated but rather was being used for pasture. a) Go to the Symbology tab of the Distance to EBA Sites raster layer and click the Classify button; b) Set the Method to Natural Breaks and the number of classes to 2; c) In the Break Values column on the right, set the first break to 5000; click OK and then OK; d) On the Spatial Analyst menu, select Reclassify (1) For New Values, set the 0 5000 range to NoData; (2) Set the 5000 and greater range to 1; (3) Put the output raster on your U: drive and click OK e) This raster layer represents the area within the survey zone that we suppose to have been used as pasture in the EBA; below, we will convert this area to a polygon and measure its area. D. Measuring distance to the nearest feature. In this example, we will measure the distance from Iron Age settlements to the nearest drainage using the Near tool in ArcToolbox. 1. Turn off the display of the EBA Sites and various EBA distance/pasture layers and turn on the display of the Iron Age Sites layer. 2. Open ArcToolbox and select Analysis ToolsProximityNear. 3. The Input features should be Iron Age Sites; 4. The Near Features should be Drainage 5. Leave the other options as is, and click OK 6. Open the attribute table for Iron Age Sites and scroll to the right. The Near tool adds two 3

CPAS Archaeological GIS Workshop, Chengdu Dec 2009

Lab 8: Basic Spatial Analysis

fields to the table: NEAR_FID, which is the FID number of the closest feature in the Drainage layer, and NEAR_DIST, which is the distance in map units to that feature. 7. Sort the NEAR_DIST column in descending order and note the positions of the sites furthest from water. The first few are errors- they are sites in an area of the survey region for which they drainage layer has no coverage. Note that the majority of sites are within 200 meters of water, with a few outliers over 200 m; which are they? III. Straight Line Allocation A. This process generates a grid which allocates space according to proximity to features (also called Theissen Polygons or Voronoi Tesselation). In this example, well see how these geometrically defined territories would be assigned to divide up the Iron Age landscape around Tell Beydar. B. In the Layer Properties for the Iron Age Sites layer, on the Fields tab, set the Primary Display Field to SITENO. This will make the pixel value of the allocations equal to the site number. If any features of the Iron Age Sites layer are selected, make sure to deselect them before proceeding. C. On the Spatial Analyst toolbar, select DistanceAllocation 1. Set Assign to: to Iron Age Sites; 2. Leave the Maximum distance blank, and set the output cell size to 10 (meters); 3. Output the raster to your U: drive in an appropriate folder and click OK. 4. Shift the Allocation layer to above the Basalt layer. 5. The output is a raster where each pixels value is the site number of the closest Iron Age site. D. Convert the allocation raster into a vector polygon layer 1. It might be more useful to have these zones represented as vectors instead of raster zones. It is possible to make this conversion. 2. In the Spatial Analyst toolbar, select ConvertRaster to Features 3. The Input Raster should be your distance allocation; 4. The Field should be Value (equivalent to the site number); 5. Give the output features a name and location on your U: drive; 6. Click OK. 7. Uncheck the display of the allocation raster layer, and set the fill color of the new vector layer to transparent. E. Measuring the area of the polygon zones. ArcGIS can calculate the area of polygons and the length of polylines very accurately. 1. Open the attribute table of the Iron Age zones polygon layer; note that the gridcode field corresponds to the site number. 2. From the Options menu, add a field called area_sqkm of type Double; 3. Right-click on the area_sqkm header and select Calculate Geometry; the Property will be Area and the Units will be Square Kilometers [sq km]. Click OK. The area_sqkm field will be populated. F. For a basic visual spatial analysis of the differences between EBA and Iron Age land use and hypothetical territories, display the EBA sustaining areas with the Iron Age zones, and note how many of the Iron Age sites and territories appear to have filled in the interstices of the EBA landscape (i.e., the areas which apparently were uncultivated in the EBA). G. Repeat steps D-E on your pasture layer (from section II.C above) to calculate the total square 4

CPAS Archaeological GIS Workshop, Chengdu Dec 2009

Lab 8: Basic Spatial Analysis

kilometers of the survey area more than 5 km from an EBA site.