Abstract
Archaeological excavation takes time, and while it provides a great deal of information about the nature of past activities, it provides only indirect information on how these activities were distributed across space. Surface materials, on the other hand, are quicker to record not because the recording is any less detailed but because the material to be recorded is immediately visible. For a given set of resources, many more surface locations can be recorded and their contents analyzed. As a consequence, archaeologists working in many countries have conducted surface surveys over large areas. In doing so, they have taken advantage of advances in survey technologies like Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and total stations together with software like Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and relational databases to greatly enhance their ability to record the spatial distribution of artifacts and sites.
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Holdaway, S. (2015). Surface Survey: Method and Strategies. In: Carver, M., Gaydarska, B., Montón-SubÃas, S. (eds) Field Archaeology from Around the World. SpringerBriefs in Archaeology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09819-7_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09819-7_4
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