Abstract
This paper explores aspects of the many factors that produce patterning in archaeological survey data, focussing on sources of bias that include topography, land use and environment; survey strategies and the roles of individuals; the problems of recognition, and those inherent in classifications and terminology; and settlement and land use histories. Examples of how such factors can be identified are given, illustrating the importance of a ‘source-critical’ approach to assessing the representativity of survey data.
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Acknowledgments
Aspects of this paper were presented at ‘MIND THE GAP—Absence, invisibility and emptiness in the interpretation of archaeological and landscape evidence’, an international seminar of the ArchaeoLandscapes Europe project,Footnote 1 organised by Stefano Campana, Chris Musson and Dominic Powesland at the Certosa di Pontignano, Siena, 22–24 April 2013. See also Cowley (2013, 2015) for further discussion of these topics.
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Cowley, D.C. (2016). What Do the Patterns Mean? Archaeological Distributions and Bias in Survey Data. In: Forte, M., Campana, S. (eds) Digital Methods and Remote Sensing in Archaeology. Quantitative Methods in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40658-9_7
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