Affordances and Purpose: Modelling Social Behaviour in the Landscape Using GIS.

In 1986, J. J. Gibson introduced a term “affordances” into the scholarly communication. He stated that latent potentials may be tracked in the landscape and used to understand human behaviour. By the means of proper theory and methods, it is possible to model these poten-tials for the past landscapes and use them as a descriptive framework for the archaeological data. On the example of the analysis of medieval and post-medieval elite seats in the Bohemia region (Czech Republic), a specific methodology will be presented as a way to describe possi-ble differences in motivations for foundation and usage of sites. Using high-resolution DEM as a background, various properties of the landscape – like visibility, accessibility, settlement network, water bodies network, landform types, etc. – were modelled and analysed to find the functional potentials of the seats. Subsequently, based on clearly stated hypotheses, the poten-tials were computationally combined to help to interpret possible purpose of sites for the past society. Combined with distribution analysis, presented method shows a perspective way for the GIS-based studies of the landscape.
David Novák

Видео Affordances and Purpose: Modelling Social Behaviour in the Landscape Using GIS. канала Recording Archaeology