Spatial Point Patterns and Processes
Andrew Bevan
Abstract
This chapter reconsiders a well-known and long-established kind of archaeological dataset: the point pattern. Spatial distributions — in which simple points stand in for more complex entities such as artefacts or sites — have been an informal focus of archaeological attention for well over a century. For the last four decades or so, they have also received formal quantitative treatment, with techniques typically borrowed from neighbouring subject areas, even if archaeology poses its own distinctive challenges. In the last ten years, further major advances have been made that: (a) better foreground issues of spatial interaction, scale, directionality and process, (b) exploit the flexibility of computer-led simulation, and (c) attempt to model both exogenous influences on point intensity across a study area, and how points interact with one another (so-called first-and second-order properties). As a complement to other chapters in this volume, this contribution considers how we can not only calculate valid descriptions of archaeological point patterns over multiple spatial scales, but also simulate more complex models to understand how our observed patterns might have arisen. These methods have a very wide variety of potential archaeological applications.