Journal of Archaeological Science 84 (2017) 74e94

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Archaeological Science

journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jas

Geospatial Big Data and archaeology: Prospects and problems too

great to ignore*
Mark D. McCoy
Department of Anthropology, Southern Methodist University, P.O. Box 750336, Dallas, TX, 75275-0336, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: As spatial technology has evolved and become integrated in to archaeology, we face a new set of chal-
Received 22 December 2016 lenges posed by the sheer size and complexity of data we use and produce. In this paper I discuss the
Received in revised form prospects and problems of Geospatial Big Data (GBD) e broadly dened as data sets with locational
27 May 2017
information that exceed the capacity of widely available hardware, software, and/or human resources.
Accepted 1 June 2017
While the datasets we create today remain within available resources, we nonetheless face the same
Available online 11 July 2017
challenges as many other elds that use and create GBD, especially in apprehensions over data quality
and privacy. After reviewing the kinds of archaeological geospatial data currently available I discuss the
Keywords:
Geospatial
near future of GBD in writing culture histories, making decisions, and visualizing the past. I use a case
Big Data study from New Zealand to argue for the value of taking a data quantity-in-use approach to GBD and
Spatial technology requiring applications of GBD in archaeology be regularly accompanied by a Standalone Quality Report.
Cyberinfrastructure 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Data science

1. Introduction results that are scientic (testable, replicable), authentic (a faithful

Archaeology has long recognized that spatial location is a core
variable in our eld (Spaulding, 1960). Today, we create, use, and
share geospatial archaeological data on an unprecedented scale. In
a recent paper, Bevan outlined many of the challenges we face with
oods of new evidence about the past that are largely digital,
frequently spatial, increasingly open and often remotely sensed
(Bevan, 2015:1473, emphasis added). As our locational datasets
grow, and become more accessible, so does apprehension about
data quality, privacy (especially the protection of the locations of
archaeological sites), and how best to manage large and growing
geospatial data. At the same time, we have amassed such large
databases that, on some topics, it would be disingenuous to claim
we do not yet have enough data (Bevan, 2015:1477).
There is a growing literature in archaeology aimed at bringing
attention to how we can best use technology (Kintigh, 2006; Snow
et al., 2006) to achieve our larger disciplinary goals (e.g., Kintigh
et al., 2014). The need for larger and more integrated geospatial
data and analyses cross-cuts virtually all of our goals and aspira-
tions as a science (Table 1). These require us to produce data and
*
The special issue was handled by Meghan C.L. Howey and Marieka Brouwer
Burg.
E-mail address: mdmccoy@smu.edu.
representation of the archaeological record and the human past),
and ethical (protects cultural resources). To that end, I am guided in
this paper by three questions: 1) What kinds of geospatial data are
available today? 2) How will larger and more accessible geospatial
databases shape the near future of archaeology? And, using a case
study from New Zealand, I examine the question, 3) What can we
do now about apprehensions regarding data quality, privacy, and
the growing size of archaeological geospatial datasets?
These questions e what data is available, what will be the im-
pacts of larger and more accessible data, and what can we do
mitigate our concerns about data e exemplify current debates
about Big Data in general, and Geospatial Big Data specically.
Geospatial Big Data (GBD) can be broadly dened as data sets that
include locational information and exceed the capacity of widely
available hardware, software, and/or human resources. Before we
go further, it is important to note that as of today, nearly all
archaeological datasets fall short of being dened as GBD since the
volume of data we work with rarely outstrips the capacity of
available resources; with the exception of remotely sensed data
(satellite imagery, lidar). But, while the volume of archaeological
geospatial datasets are currently manageable, there are at least two
good reasons we should begin to think about our geospatial data-
sets as GBD. First, due to the fragmentary nature of archaeological
material evidence we are compelled to work with a broad variety of
sources of data, to code complex contextual information in to a

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2017.06.003
0305-4403/ 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 M.D. McCoy / Journal of Archaeological Science 84 (2017) 74e94 75

Table 1
Grand Challenges for Archaeology and the Need for Larger Geospatial Data and Analyses. Kintigh et al. (2014:5) summary of the most important scientic challenges for
archaeology highlight a number of areas where the need for larger geospatial datasets and analyses is paramount. The purpose of this paper is identify how we are currently
building, using, and sharing geospatial data; what larger geospatial datasets will mean for the near future; and suggest ways we may overcome apprehension over the ad-
equacy of large geospatial datasets e otherwise known as Geospatial Big Data e that will be necessary to meet our disciplinary goals.

General Topic Examples of the Need for Larger Geospatial Datasets and Analyses

Emergence, Communities, and

Complexity
Archaeological data on cities range from small architectural details and short-lived cities to broad
patterns of heterogeneous urban textures covering many square kilometers and presenting a historical
depth of millennia. Consequently, characterizing long-term urban fabrics and animating associated
behaviors via computational modeling requires enormous data archives and substantial computational
infrastructure (Kintigh et al., 2014:10, emphasis added).
Conict is notoriously difcult to identify and quantify through archaeological remains more sys-
tematic and large-scale analyses are certainly necessary. (Kintigh et al., 2014:10, emphasis added).
Inequality can be systematically inferred through studies of landscape, monuments, residences, and
mortuary remains Quantitative dynamic modeling to emplace general models of sociopolitical
change in specic prehistoric and historical settings will be critical to our success. (Kintigh et al.,
2014:9, emphasis added).
Resilience, Persistence,
Transformation, and The archaeological record is replete with examples of the rise and fall of communities of all scales
Collapse With recent advances in the quantity and quality of archaeological and historical studies, we can uncover
robust patterns in societal collapses over time and space. (Kintigh et al., 2014:11, emphasis added).
Movement, Mobility, and
Migration Typically, archaeologists have explored human mobility through a case-study approach based on
archaeological and ancillary data from small-scale research projects. However, we also see the need for
regional- and continental-scale studies that match the scale of the problem to the scale of particular
interactions. (Kintigh et al., 2014:13, emphasis added).
Cognition, Behavior, and
Identity . how did humanity arise?... a massive body of emerging data are critical to resolving this question
(Kintigh et al., 2014:15, emphasis added).
Tracking and evaluating localized arrangements and recongurations necessitates extensive in-
vestments in digital spatial datasets that incorporate LiDAR, geophysical, and other three-dimensional
data that allow virtual exploration and analysis. (Kintigh et al., 2014:15, emphasis added).
Human Environment
Interaction How do humans perceive and react to changes in climate and the natural environment over short-
and long-terms?... The challenge is to move from case or regional studies to larger scale comparative
research, and to learn how to make generalizable statements about how people make choices that
draw on universal biases in cognition [this] will require making data from relatively small eld
projects widely accessible and increasing current technological capabilities to allow for studies of human-
environment interaction to increase in scope and complexity (Kintigh et al., 2014:18e19, emphasis
added).

digital format, and to interpolate trends across time and space
using sparse data. These types of problems (variety, veracity,
visualization) mirror issues raised by Big Data (see also Huggett,
2016). Second, from the perspective of data science our data are
probably best classied as embryonic Geospatial Big Data in that
they are likely to grow extremely large in volume in the future. We
have the opportunity now to shape our growing geospatial datasets
before it becomes necessary to come up with specialized solutions
for common tasks. It is also important to note that the problem of
best practices regarding geospatial data is well-known to the sub-
eld of geospatial archaeology, as well as archaeology that en-
gages with computer and data science. As the science and tech-
nology dealing with GBD evolves, the hyper-technical side of
archaeology is more important than ever. But, since GBD is already
inuencing how we write culture history, visualize our research,
and participate in public discourse about science and heritage, I felt
it is timely to review and comment on this topic for a broad audi-
ence in as non-technical terms as is reasonable.
2. Geospatial big data and archaeology
Today, we refer to any information, of or relating to the relative
position of things on the earth's surface as geospatial data (Collins
English Dictionary). Geospatial Big Data (GBD) is geospatial data
that exceeds the capacity of widely available resources (i.e., hard-
ware, software, human resources) and requires specialized effort to
work with. Applied research in GBD tends to be driven by the
perceived economic benet of mining data to reveal spatial re-
lationships that make businesses more cost efcient, enhance
insight in to customer's behavior, and help industry make better
76 M.D. McCoy / Journal of Archaeological Science 84 (2017) 74e94
decisions. For example, when Netix suggests movies and TV
shows to watch, it does so in part based on what is popular near
you. That is GBD at work. It is Big in that Netix is using millions of
previous searches and it is Geospatial by tagging search data by zip
code and then using that variable in its recommendation algorithm
(Lee and Kang, 2015:76).
For data science, GBD is a subset of the more general effort of
dealing with Big Data, and since much of the data in the world can
be geo-referenced, it is hard to underestimate the importance of
geospatial big data handling (Li et al., 2016:120). There is no spe-
cic test that would identify and classify data as GBD, rather GBD is
commonly said to have one of several characteristics: volume, ve-
locity, and variety (Laney, 2001). Other additional characteristics
that have emerged including veracity, visualization, and visibility (Li
et al., 2016; see also Suthaharan, 2014).
Archaeology is not what data scientists had in mind when
outlining what constitutes GBD. In my view, we nonetheless should
begin to think of our geospatial data as GBD while they are still
manageable in terms of volume, in part, so we can improve how we
deal with the other issues inherent in creating, maintaining, and
using GBD. Below are some examples of how the GBD character-
istics apply to archaeology:
Volume for web-based businesses is measured not in gigabytes,
or terabytes, but petabytes (1000 gigabytes 1 terabyte; 1000
terabytes 1 petabyte). For archaeology, it is impossible to say
precisely how much data there are, but we know there are two
major sources of geospatial data that together represent high and
growing volume. First, data coming from legacy projects, especially
as we migrate the white paper backlog in to digital (reports, forms,
catalogs, eld notes, photographs, etc.). This is an unknown but
probably substantial volume of information that will grow even
though the underlying research may have been nished decades
ago. Second, the often cited statistic that 90% of the world's data
was generated in the last two years applies to archaeology too.
Therefore, much more daunting in terms of volume is the size of
satellite remote sensing (Wiseman and El-Baz, 2007), eld data
(GPS, photogrammetry, drones, laser scanning, etc.), and computer
based research, such as simulation.
Velocity is often a problem for GBD applications because of the
torrent of information coming in around the clock. For archaeology,
high and increasing velocity is a concern, but the inconsistency in
the velocity of data is equally problematic. Take for example one of
the most visible archaeological datasets on the web, the Digital
Archaeological Record (tDAR). In 2011, tDAR integrated a large
(350,000) database of reports and citations created by the US
National Parks (National Archaeological Database, NADB). This was
a major positive step forward for the digital archive, but in terms of
velocity, it means in one year it grew six times larger than all other
years combined (2008e16).
Variety in sources, types, and precision of data can create
intractable problems for any database. For archaeology, Cooper and
Green (2015) recently summarized how in the English Landscapes
and Identities project they dealt with information coming from a
wide range of sources collected over generations. Even after careful
research, there would sometimes be no clear way to tell, for
example, if sources were talking about the same monument ve
times, or ve different monuments in the same place. Precision in
terms of geolocation is much easier to achieve today. Nonetheless,
the number of ways we might record a site (i.e., map data, imagery)
and index it (i.e., site name, place name, site type), means variety
will continue to be a challenge.
Veracity is more than locational accuracy, for archaeology it is a
question of the quality of the information within a narrowly dened
set of relational variables; something we commonly refer to as
context. In data science, the size of Big Data is sometimes used to
justify the use of unveried sources of information, the underlying
logic being that the sheer volume of data will overcome the inclusion
of some datasets with poor accuracy. We are beginning to see this
approach applied to archaeological geospatial data, and not sur-
prisingly, this has raised concerns for how we account for context.
Visualization of data is employed at all stages of research (i.e.,
generating hypotheses, identifying patterns, representing results)
to help us make sense of abstract information. Archaeology has
developed by consensus a number of methods for visualizing our
geospatial data in static products (i.e., regional maps, site plans,
stratigraphic drawings, etc.). Today, with the advent of 3D tech-
nologies, it much easier to also represent the forms of artifacts and
sites in an interactive digital format, but these have yet to supplant
static products.
Visibility of archaeological geospatial datasets is at an all-time
high in terms of coverage, variety, and richness. Advances in
cloud technology and web GIS mean we are seeing a growth in
online data repositories, as well as site location indexes, atlases, and
gazetteers. Increased visibility naturally comes with increased
concerns with privacy and misuse of archaeological data, and
perhaps counter-intuitively, illustrates the gaps where geospatial
datasets are not visible.
These examples are certainly not an exhaustive list of the ways
in which archaeological geospatial data has the qualities of GBD,
nonetheless they illustrate why in this paper I have chosen to
classify our largest geospatial datasets as GBD.
3. How we use Geospatial Big Data in the present
The kinds of geospatial data that are available to professional
archaeologists and the public today varies wildly depending upon
region, the time period, the topic of interest, and the type of evi-
dence of the human past. For the purposes of this discussion I have
classied geospatial datasets (Table 2) in a number of different
types: data repositories, location indexes, radiocarbon databases,
project websites, and academic sources. This is not an exhaustive
list, nor are these exclusive categories, they are instead meant to
represent a cross-section of how we create, share, and use GBD in
practice today. I have further broken down these categories by a
qualitative summary of the sources of geospatial data used, acces-
sibility, and quality, as a way to evaluate sources in terms of their
potential for data mining. Data mining itself is a misleading term
in that the goal is not to extract a specic piece of existing data, but
to discover new patterns and/or associations that would be
impossible to recognize and evaluate; a process also referred to by
the somewhat ambiguous, but appropriate, term from data science:
knowledge discovery. I have not attempted to review geospatial
databases as they apply to museums and artifact collections (Do rter
and Davis, 2013), although I recognize that these have several
added complexities in terms of data quality and the need to code
locational information on provenience (of where an object was
reportedly found), and provenance (where it has been since it was
found, and where it is located today).
One of the rst-order differences between contemporary geo-
spatial databases is the distinction between archival databases
verses integrative databases. Archival datasets grow by accretion of
distinct datasets, whereas in integrative datasets new data is added
in to a single database, as they are available. For example, data
repositories like Archaeology Data Service (ADS) and The Digital
Archaeological Record (tDAR) are omnibuses that takes in single
geospatial datasets that keep their distinct character and are
discoverable along with any number of other types of non-
geospatial data. In contrast, site indexes like the Digital Index of
North American Archaeology (DINNA), digital gazetteers like
Pleiades (pleiades.stoa.org), or radiocarbon databases on
 M.D. McCoy / Journal of Archaeological Science 84 (2017) 74e94
archaeological materials like the Canadian Archaeological Radio-
carbon Database (CARD), continuously take in new information
from a variety of sources and compile it in to a single database. Each
of these two kinds of datasets draws on academic and applied
cultural resource management sources for information.
The integrative databases, as opposed to the archival databases,
are especially good at exposing clear biases in what kinds of in-
formation is currently accessible. For example, Fig. 1 shows a
several kinds of geospatial data: Mesoamerican sites (The Elec-
tronic Atlas of Ancient Maya Sites), ancient places of the Medi-
terranean (Pleiades), and sample locations derived from several
major radiocarbon databases and regional studies. Each uses co-
ordinates to record location and so are easily converted in to the
same data model (vector, points). The site database is a pan-Maya
registry of ancient Maya settlements and each point has a corre-
sponding assessment of Site Rank to allow for quantitative geo-
spatial analyses. In contrast, ancient places includes settlements
and an extremely broad variety of other categories, such as place
names, to aid in the qualitative analyses of historical texts. The third
map shown, radiocarbon data from archaeological sites, is different
again. Like the site database, radiocarbon databases are clearly built
with quantitative analysis in mind, but like the ancient places
database, it includes any and all kinds of phenomenon (i.e., evi-
dence of settlements, foraging, farming, burials, etc.). It should also
be noted that it is possible that some radiocarbon dates within a
database reect natural processes rather than human behavior.
Nonetheless, even after combining some of the largest
Fig. 1. Geospatial big data on sites, ancient places, and radiocarbon dates. Sources: The electronic atlas of ancient maya sites: a geographic information system (GIS); pleiades e the
stoa consortium; Goldberg et al., 2016; Martindale et al., 2016; Russell et al., 2014; Silva et al., 2015; Vermeersch, 2016).
77
archaeological databases available, the geographic bias toward
research on North America and Europe is readily apparent.
There may also be some geographic biases in the other two
examples, but the regional-temporal focuses would appear to
achieve a level of evenness not seen in other kinds of datasets.
An even more difcult quality to evaluate in our largest geo-
spatial datasets is geospatial-temporal coverage. Take for example
recent studies from the Near East (Lawrence et al., 2016) and China
(Hosner et al., 2016). The goals of each study are similar e to qualify
and quantify paleodemographic and settlement pattern trends over
the Neolithic through Bronze Ages e and both take a time-slice
approach where site records are coded by cultural period (e.g.,
Bronze Age) and by absolute time (century or millennium scale)
with a beginning/end (min/max age) and time period (e.g. 6 kya).
The Near Eastern study is focused on urbanism and, using a mix of
survey and remote sensing, each record includes an estimate of site
size. Both studies compare their data to shifting climate regimes in
their respective regions and other key variables. These are both
ambitious and important undertakings using the best available
and most up-to-date coverage of archaeological sites obtained by
salvage and research excavations and surveys and recognize the
underlying data has known limitations in terms of uneven
geospatial-temporal coverage within the respective regions
(Hosner et al., 2016: 1589, emphasis added). At rst glance, the
Chinese dataset appears to have much better coverage
with 50,000 site records compared with less than 400 sites in the
Near East. However, if we account for the total size of the regions
78 M.D. McCoy / Journal of Archaeological Science 84 (2017) 74e94

Table 2
Examples of Geospatial Big Data in Archaeology. See full internet references in List of Web and Data Sources.

Type of Source Examples Sources of Geospatial Data Accessibility Data Quality

Information

Data Repositories Archaeology Data Service (ADS)
The Digital Archaeological
Record (tDAR)
Location Indexes Site Indexes. Digital Index of
North American Archaeology
(DINNA); ArchSite (New
Zealand Archaeological
Association)
Atlases and Gazetteers. CORONA
Atlas of the Middle East,

Antiquity A-la-carte and
Pleiades, American Institute of
Archaeology's Archaeology of
North America
Radiocarbon Databases Canadian Archaeological
Radiocarbon Database (CARD
2.0)
Radiocarbon Palaeolithic
Europe Database (Version 20)
Project Websites Preservation. CyArk (non-prot,
3D and VR), Sketchfab (for
prot, community portal
supporting 3D and VR)
Digital Archiving. Comparative
Archaeology Database
(University of Pittsburg)
Long-term Projects. Paleoindian
Database of the Americas
(PIDBA), English Landscapes
and Identities Project
Academic Sources Journals. Journal of
Archaeological Science, Journal
of Archaeological Science:
Reports, Archaeometry,
Archaeological Prospection
Academic Libraries and Centers.
Stanford Geospatial Center,
Harvard Geospatial Library,
Ancient World Mapping Center
(Brown), Center for Advanced
Spatial Technologies (Arkansas)
Stand-alone static datasets (GIS
layers, locations as elds in
other datasets) from academic,
government, and cultural
resource management.
Single databases from a union
of site information from
academic, government, and
cultural resource management.
Single databases from a union
of independently reported
radiocarbon results with
locational information.
Variable. Datasets reect the
goals and focus of study but can
be broken in to broad categories
(atlases, preservation,
archiving, etc.).
Some archaeological journals
allow optional supporting
datasets with geospatial
information.
University support centers and
libraries provide historic and
environmental datasets useful
for archaeology.
Public and private web portals.
User registration required for
download.
Web-GIS, public and private
web portals.
Most require user registration
for download/access.
Public and private web portals.
User registration required for
download.
Public web portals. No user
registration required. Some
allow download.
Public web portals.
Journal articles with
supplemental data may be
behind the pay wall. User
registration required for some
downloads.
Approved digital repositories
for the results of publicly
funded science. Supports
training in best practices.
Mix of approved digital
repositories for the results of
publicly funded science and
geodata built for public
consumption. Supports training
in best practices.
Long-term projects with
updates to correct errors.
Variable. Some long-term
projects are a union of datasets,
others are stand-alone
databases from completed
projects.
Datasets published as
supplemental material have
undergone peer-review. Self-
archived datasets may or may
not have been reviewed.

examined (~0.3 million vs ~9.6 million square km), the Chinese
dataset has only about four times as many records per million
square km as the Near Eastern dataset, and if one considers
coverage within contemporaneous time periods, the density of
sites is even more similar. Between 3 and 4 kya, there are less than
three times as many sites per million square km in the Chinese data
than the Near Eastern data (19,837 sites/9.6 mil sq km vs. 222 sites/
0.3 mil sq km). The lesson here is clear e these datasets are more
alike than one would estimate just based on the number of records
when one accounts for space and time.
The quality of geospatial data goes beyond simply reporting the
provenience of artifacts, or the location of sites, and is probably best
thought of in terms of how well the dataset conforms to established
best practices. Most archaeological geospatial datasets rely on users
to self-police when it comes to quality and report critical infor-
mation that others might use to evaluate quality as metadata. Here
again the distinction between archived and integrative is a critical
one; archived data are frozen in place, integrative data can be
revised with updated versions. This does not mean one is better
than the other, or that high quality studies will necessarily have
matching high quality geospatial datasets. For example, we would
expect archived data published as supplementary material in
peer-reviewed journals to conrm closely to best practices. Un-
fortunately, geospatial data underlying many, if not most, studies is
simply missing. Major academic journals, including the Journal of
Archaeological Science, do not require publishing geospatial data
alongside of new research. This is not a problem that is unique to
geospatial data, but one that could be xed (see Horsburgh et al.,
2016 for a similar critique regarding the lack of rigorous publica-
tion of zooarchaeological data).
Publishing the locations of archaeological sites raises is a
number of serious privacy issues. In a rare exception to the Freedom
of Information Act in the United States, federal archaeologists
routinely withhold the location of archaeological sites that are not
formally open for public visitation to protect the sites from
looting and vandalism (Hitchcock, 2006:471). Large databases of
site records have also been used to ght looting, as has been the
case in satellite imagery monitoring of the impacts of looting on
culture heritage in the Near East (Contreras and Brodie, 2010;
Stone, 2008, 2015). For example, in Syria, Casana (2015:150) has
discovered through examining the impacts of looting over time
that war-related looting is most frequent and most widespread in
Kurdish and opposition-held areas, which are, perhaps unsurpris-
ingly, also the regions with the weakest centralized authority.
4. Use of Geospatial Big Data in the near future
Kintigh et al. (2014) clearly outline why we should aspire for
 M.D. McCoy / Journal of Archaeological Science 84 (2017) 74e94
larger and more accessible geospatial databases, but in my review
of how we currently use GBD, I found several trends that I believe
are strong indicators as to how this technology will be applied in
the near future. To be clear, these are not necessarily the most
important or innovative uses of GBD, and I do not predict that these
will change the fundamentals of how we dene our goals. I do
however take the position that the changes I highlight here will
apply broadly, and not just to a sub-set of tech savvy experts.
Having said that, as we approach the volume of Big Data, we may
nd it more and more necessary to use of machine learning to
classify data (e.g., Maaten et al., 2007), engage in far more open data
archaeology (Huggett, 2014, 2015a, 2015b), and rethink how we
create datasets with downstream Big Data analysis and simulation
in mind (Barton, 2013; Kansa et al., 2014; Kintigh, 2015).
4.1. Culture history in the era of Geospatial Big Data
Archaeology has had a long love affair with GIS. There were
concerns early on that GIS would lead us down a path to environ-
mental determinism (Gaffney and van Leusen, 1995). The evidence
to the contrary is all around us in the variety of uses we have put
GIS to (McCoy and Ladefoged, 2009). I am not overly concerned
about newer additions to our spatial technology tool kit pulling us
down one or another theoretical path. Geospatial Big Data, in my
view, will not lead us down an unintended path given that GBD is
something that has attracted our colleagues in both the Earth Sci-
ences (e.g., Karmas et al., 2016) and in Digital Humanities (e.g.,
Bodenhamer et al., 2010). This is not to say that it will have no effect
on how we do archaeology, and here we turn to the topic of how we
write culture histories in the era of GBD.
The best example of how GBD can, and will, inuence how we
write culture histories of the prehistoric past is in the use of
radiocarbon mega-databases. From the beginning of the use of
radiocarbon dating in archaeology, we have seen value in the
collection of regional radiocarbon databases. As early as 1960s,
Green (1964), made the case for a standardized paper index card
system for radiocarbon dates in Oceania (see also Jelinek, 1962).
Today, radiocarbon databases continue to be regional organized,
and they are most often, but not exclusively, applied to one of two
global phenomenon: (1) migrations (Silva and Steele, 2014) and
demography (Steele, 2010) of modern humans in the Pleistocene in
Europe (Vermeersch, 2016), Australasia (Field et al., 2007; Williams
et al., 2014), and the Americas (Chaput et al., 2015; Delgado et al.,
2015; Goldberg et al., 2016; Peros et al., 2010); and (2) the spread
of Neolithic farmers, or domesticates, in Europe (Crombe  and
Robinson, 2014), Asia (Silva et al., 2015), the Americas (Lemmen,
2012), Africa (Russell et al., 2014), and Polynesia (Mulrooney,
2013; Wilmshurst et al., 2011). The geographic distribution of the
databases that underlay this research by necessity stretch beyond
national boundaries, and vary in total size from a few hundred to
tens of thousands of records. For the most part, they use the co-
ordinates (latitude, longitude; northing, easting) of the site where a
radiocarbon date was reported. There are always a small fraction of
dates without the requisite site location coordinate information.
These databases often have extensive information on the context,
material dated, and laboratory results.
Concerns regarding studies using mega-radiocarbon databases
naturally vary from case to case e and at this stage probably war-
rant their own lengthy review e but, in brief, concerns tend to
center around a few related key points. First, there is the question of
what underlying phenomenon is being measured. These databases
are the result of many different studies and it is not always clear
what thresholds have been used to separate natural from cultural
phenomenon, and proxy measures for the presence-absence or
intensity of activity in a location is study dependent (Attenbrow
79
and Hiscock, 2015). Second, there is the question of sampling.
There will always be locations, and time periods, that will be over-
sampled or under-sampled, due to the natural process of
taphonomy and the spatially discontinuous nature of archaeolog-
ical research. Even the largest mega-radiocarbon database studies
recognize that these must be dealt with (Chaput et al., 2015:12131).
Lastly, and related to the question of sampling, is the trans-
formation of data. Radiocarbon dates are statements of probability,
and these probabilities are often transformed, as pooled or sum-
med probabilities (e.g., Bamforth and Grund, 2012; Contreras and
Meadows, 2014), or as Bayesian models (e.g., Long and Taylor,
2015), to identify trends over time. When it comes to trans-
forming data over space, the interpolation of data points is a well-
trodden path for geospatial analyses. Results are often presented as
time-slice maps, and short videos, as seen in recent studies of
demography in Ireland (vector, point; McLaughlin et al., 2016), and
North America (raster, heat-map; Chaput et al., 2015).
Historical archaeology in North America, where radiocarbon
dating is more rarely used, presents an interesting counter to the
role of GBD in archaeology. For example, the Digital Archaeological
Archive of Comparative Slavery (DAACS), is an extraordinarily data
rich Web-based initiative designed to foster inter-site, compara-
tive archaeological research on slavery including 2 million arti-
facts, chronological information (mean ceramic date; South, 1977)
that can be derived a number of ways depending on the query. Like
radiocarbon databases, the DAACS is designed to be regional
(geographic coverage includes the US Southeast and the Carib-
bean). The quantity of sites is many times lower than regional
radiocarbon database (DAACS includes 73 sites), but the quality of
information is outstanding, including site plans, Harris matrixes,
and a range of other types of information.
One factor should concern archaeology, no matter what time
period or region, is balancing new opportunities for writing culture
histories based on large geospatial datasets, against the unintended
thoughtlessness toward context that such studies could promote.
Specically, the kind of thoughtlessness that concerns me comes
from either leaving out important data because it is difcult to
include in the dataset or over-including inappropriate data simply
because it is easy and available. So, while on the one hand we
cannot let our GBD can become hoppers lled with data that is
handy, it would be a waste if we fail to gain the benet that data
mining large databases would allow. We have to come to terms
with the fact that some results will migrate to geospatial datasets
well and others will be much more difcult. With existing data-
bases there are a number of options including treating large data-
bases as they were complete to expose biases (e.g., Cooper and
Green, 2015), using computational models (e.g., Barton et al.,
2010) to overcome sampling problems, and to use data on mod-
ern population and land cover as proxy measures for systemic bias
in recovery (e.g., Miller, 2016). This is especially important to
identify and account for gaps due to recovery bias since large
geospatial radiocarbon databases can reveal periods of de-
mographic collapse that should be of keen interest to archaeology
(Shennan et al., 2013; McLaughlin et al., 2016; Mulrooney, 2013;
Zubimendi et al., 2015).
4.2. Archipelagos of geospatial data and decision making
One of the times when geospatial data is most critical is when
making decisions regarding site preservation; a factor weighted
carefully in academic research and cultural resource management.
Take for example the concerns over the current and future impacts
of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) to the natural environment
and cultural sites. The DAPL project is a 1886 km (1172 miles) long
pipeline that is designed to bring oil produced in North Dakota to
80 M.D. McCoy / Journal of Archaeological Science 84 (2017) 74e94
production facilities in Illinois. At the time of writing, intense
protests continue in the tribal territory of the Standing Rock Sioux
in North Dakota centering mainly on water quality but also the
effect the project has had on sacred sites. Colwell (2016) rhetori-
cally asks, What sacred sites have been damaged by [the pipeline]?
We can't really know for certain e and our legal system [in the US]
is partly to blame. The Society for American Archaeology has
written to the US Army Corps of Engineers to ask for a review of the
project citing a number of problematic signs that the approach
taken to tribal consultation process was too piecemeal and the area
under consideration may have been too restrictive (Gifford-
Gonzalez, 2016).
It is unclear how the DAPL situation will ultimately be resolved
but it does throw in to high relief some of the consequences of data
silos. Here I am using the term silo to refer to the degree of access
the public has to geospatial data. For example, the company that is
building the pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners, presents the pro-
posed route of the pipeline online in ve static maps
(daplpipelinefacts.com); one that highlights the 50 counties it
crosses, and four state-scaled maps of North Dakota, South Dakota,
Iowa, and Illinois. The actual route is silo-ed by the fact that only
static, low quality maps are made available. There have been a
number of efforts to counter this by mapping the route reportedly
based on public records and crowdsourced information (Nitin Gadia,
bakkenpipelinemap.com). Maps have also been a used as a form of
protest of the DAPL including one juxtaposing the proposed route
and unceded Sioux land under 1851 treaty (northlandia.
wordpress.com), and a map showing the location of protests with
Lakota/Dakota place names (map by Jordan Engle and Dakota Wind)
as part of The Decolonial Atlas (decolonialatlas.wordpress.com). To
varying degrees these reect a broader trend of more, largely un-
trained, private citizens participating in Volunteered Geographic
Information (Goodchild, 2007), exemplied by OpenStreetMap.org,
a platform that has been used in humanitarian crisis mapping.
The natural question is where along the proposed route are
known archaeological sites, and here we see other examples of data
silos. The environmental assessment report prepared by Energy
Transfer Partners for the US Army Corp of Engineers for the Illinois
segment of the proposed route in part reads (Dakota Access,
2016:66):
A check of previously-recorded cultural resources was under-
taken within a 1.6-km (km) (1.0-mile) radius of the Proposed
Action Areas/Connected Action Areas prior to the commence-
ment of eldwork. Online databases were consulted, including
the National Historic Landmark list and the National Register of
Historic Places. The Historic and Architectural Resources
Geographic Information System (HARGIS), maintained by the
Illinois Historic Preservation Agency (IHPA), was consulted for
locational and other information regarding historic buildings,
historic engineering structures, and cemeteries. The Illinois In-
ventory of Archaeological Sites geodatabase, maintained by the
Illinois State Museum, was consulted for locational and other
data regarding recorded archaeological sites and previously-
reported archaeological surveys and excavations. The Illinois
Cultural Resource Management Report Database, maintained by
the University of Illinois, was consulted for detailed information
available in previous reports. General Land Ofce maps were
researched at the Federal Township Plats website maintained by
the Illinois Secretary of State. Old county plat maps and atlases
were researched at the Illinois State Library and the Galesburg
Public Library.
This type of convoluted site record searching is typical of the due
diligence required in cultural resource management, and since each
of the four states on the proposed route have their own sets of
relevant state agencies, universities, and libraries, querying more
than a dozen sources of geospatial data is required to identify
previously recorded sites.
The administrative and institutional silos highlighted above of
course do not apply to national scale databases that cross US state
administrative boundaries; these larger datasets belong to a silo
dened by cultural value. Specically, the National Register, and to a
lesser degree and National Landmark designation, include places
that the US government considers of national importance. The
National Register lists 90,000 locations, and is accessible as a web
based GIS point layer online (nps.gov). In the Standing Rock Sioux's
territory, and across the US, the National Register is mainly made up
of historic buildings. Therefore, in rural areas the density of sites is
low; indeed, there are only 441 in all of North Dakoka (as of July
2015). Most relevant to the DAPL project, is the question of Tradi-
tional Cultural Properties (TCP). Within the National Register a TCP
is a property eligible for inclusion based on its associations
with cultural practices, traditions, beliefs, lifeways, arts, crafts, or
social institutions of a living community (nps.gov). This is a cate-
gory dened by value of a place to local groups, and while it is
common for physical evidence of the past (e.g., an archaeological
site) to also be a cultural site, sacred places are not necessarily
marked by physical evidence of past activities, nor are their loca-
tions necessarily something that is appropriate to be shared
broadly. Indigenous geographers have made in-roads in thinking
through how to use advances in spatial technology (Dobbs and
Louis, 2015), but consultation and collaboration remain the best
way to identify TCP.
Crowdsourcing is one avenue to break down silos and the use of
crowdsourcing to fund archaeology and create geospatial datasets
has attracted a great deal of attention. Bonacchi et al. (2015)
describe lessons learned from the Micropast website
(crowdsourced.micropasts.org) - a site used to try and attract
crowdfunding and which also served as a portal to access the re-
sults of crowd sourced data - including that crowdfunding was
most effective when used as a catalyst for more mixed models
along with ofine donations. Parcak's new GlobalXplorer website
(globalxplorer.org) is aimed at attracting crowdfunding as well as
spreading the analysis of satellite imagery through creating a
global network of citizen explorers. But, without a way to access
the data that is created through this volunteer science, the results
may prove to be another data silo.
While I have emphasized the roles of silos, I would note that the
notion of creating a top-down, single geospatial cyberinfrastructure
(CI) is probably doomed to failure. Snow et al. (2006) highlighted
the fundamental problem of our inability to simultaneously access
different categories of information (databases, grey literature, and
images) and pointed out CI should be allowed, to evolve as it is
adopted, used, and contributed to by a community to do so also
involves solving problems of condentiality and trust, and securing
long-term commitment from agencies (Snow et al., 2006:959).
Along those lines, we are beginning to see the organic conglom-
eration of independently created geospatial databases in to archival
or integrative databases. For example, the Canadian-based CARD
database (Martindale et al., 2016) now includes a massive database
on Paleolithic Europe (Vermeersch, 2016), and the Australia-based
Field Acquired Information Management System (FAIMS) project
moved their repository due to a lack of funds and resources to the
US-based Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR). However, to be
clear, I do not believe this portends a single CI for geospatial data in
archaeology on the horizon.
One thing that I would like to see, and I think we will see, is
more visibility between geospatial datasets by creating more geo-
portal platforms to connect archipelagos of related datasets. Well-
 M.D. McCoy / Journal of Archaeological Science 84 (2017) 74e94
tended silos are how Geospatial Big Data are going to grow and be
quality checked. Without them we lose institutional knowledge of
the character of databases and the ability to update them. But at
the same time we need to build digital architecture that allows us to
see that other data silos exist, even if access is limited. The tech-
nology for creating archipelagos of geospatial datasets exists and is
improving - the European Union's Inspire Geoportal (inspire-geo-
portal.ec.europa.eu) is a good example - and the marketplace for
cloud computing web GIS (i.e., CartoDB) will likely give archaeology
many more options than currently available as desktop software
(i.e., ESRI's ArcGIS; Quantum GIS) or web mapping (i.e., Google
Maps, Google Earth).
4.3. Visualization and ways to see the past
It is difcult to underestimate the power of good visuals in
communicating the results of archaeological research and con-
necting with the public. The high-resolution satellite imagery
showing major sites before-and-after looting, for example, is a
powerful way to illustrate ongoing threats to cultural heritage. It
also goes without saying that the proliferation of UAV (unmanned
aerial vehicles), 3D terrestrial laser scanning, and other spatial
technologies is multiplying the volume of geospatial data available
to archaeology at a breakneck pace.
It is interesting to see how archaeology deals with the inherent
difculties in visualization of GBD. Data visualization when it
comes to GBD pushes against the natural limitations of what the
human eye can visually process; one reason why we see more use
of geographic scale-dependent representations (see for example,
DINAA). In archaeology, the topic of social network analysis (SNA) is
a domain where we are seeing lots of visualization of large geo-
spatial databases. SNA comes with its own data model (nodes,
links) and diagrams that illustrate networks. The connection back
to geographic space, and geographic relationships, can be
embedded within the visualization (i.e., Clark et al., 2014), or the
results of the SNA can be mapped on to the real world in some
fashion (i.e., Mills et al., 2013).
Representative visualization e that is trying to get across to your
audience how archaeology looks today, or looked at some point in
the past e is more accessible as 3D models become easier to create
and manipulate through technologies like structure-from-motion
3D models (i.e., AutoDesk's 123D Catch), and more user-friendly
computer aided drawing software (i.e., Trimble's SketchUp). The
results of professional surveying are also reaching a larger audience
through work by outts like CyArk and community sharing web
platforms like Sketchfab. 3D models are being integrated within
web GIS, through Google Earth's Street View that allow viewers to
visit an archaeological site, and as Virtual Reality (VR) becomes
more commonplace, these virtual visits will certainly become more
immersive.
There are a number of great examples of the use of GBD and
social media, such as a recent web GIS (CartoDB) visualization of
geotagged posts from around the world as part of the Day of
Archaeology Project (jessogden.carto.com). The potential for edu-
cation and public outreach through social media is clear to see,
even if it is less clear how exactly it will unfold as technology and
tastes change. Other trends, like the Internet of Things (IoT), are
even harder to predict how they will articulate with the goals of
archaeology, but certainly as the gap between the digital and
modern things becomes smaller, so will the gap between the digital
and ancient things (see also Horton, 2014).
5. Geospatial Big Data in action: Maori fortications (Pa)
Data quality, privacy, and the growing size of our datasets are
81
problems that need to be faced head on or they will have a para-
lyzing effect on advances in archaeology. I present three small
studies on the archaeology of fortications in New Zealand, called
pa by Maori. For these examples I will employ different types of
data to examine culture history, evaluate public and professional
site records, and create visualizations. For the purposes of this
paper I am taking a data quality-in-use approach (Merino et al.,
2016), meaning that I do not presume to know the adequacy of
the existing GBD, or the improvements necessary to achieve the
tasks at hand, before the study. Rather, a post hoc assessment is
made of the adequacy of the original dataset and improvements in
a Standalone Quality Report. I recognize this goes against our in-
stincts as scholars and looks like we are abandoning our core values
regarding data quality. To the contrary, what I am advocating is
nding a productive way to apply those values on Geospatial Big
Data and identify issues in use, and share how they have been dealt
with, so we can have better GBD in the future.
Maori fortications are an example of a topic about which we
are data rich and information poor. We know, for example, when
they began to be built, we know about how many were built, we
know many more were built in warmer, coastal environments with
good farmland and high population density. It remains unclear,
however, if population density was always high in regions with
good farmland from rst settlement of the islands, or if there were
any geographic shifts in where fortications were built over time.
New Zealand was rst settled after 1250 CE through long-
distance voyages from Eastern Polynesia (for a recent summary,
see Dye, 2015). The rst centuries of New Zealand's culture history,
referred to as the Early Period (1250e1450 CE) includes strong
evidence for a highly mobile settlement pattern across the country,
but no fortications (Walter et al., 2010). There remains no strong
evidence for the construction of fortications until around 1500 CE
(Schmidt, 1996; McFadgen et al., 1994), in the Middle Period
(1450e1650). The use of fortications was documented by Euro-
pean visitors during the Late Period (1650e1800 CE) and in the
Historical Period (after 1800 CE) when Maori continued to use
traditional fortications with adaptations for the introduction of
muskets.
As noted above, we have a good idea of the number, geographic
range, and preferred location of fortications (Fig. 2). The total
number of fortications built by the ancestors of Maori over three
centuries has been given in various sources as being between 4000
and 6000 (Davidson, 1984), followed by more specic site record
based gure of 6528 (Schmidt, 1996), and present professional site
records give a gure of 7314 (ArchSite, 2017). Fortications have
been recorded across the entirety of New Zealand's two major
islands and offshore islands. There is however a well-known pref-
erence for northern, warmer, coastal environments, as seen in the
site predictive model shown in Fig. 2 (Leathwick, 2000). The North
Island, and the northern parts of the South Island, are the only lo-
cations suitable for the crops that the ancestors of Maori brought
with them to New Zealand, and so while the paleodemography of
the islands is currently a matter of speculation, we presume that
the agricultural economy in the warmer north allowed for a much
faster growth rate than the hunting-shing economy of the colder
south (Davidson, 1984:56e59). And so, the spatial distribution of
fortications is positively correlated with both good farmland and
the regions with the highest population density at the time of Eu-
ropean contact.
In Allen (2006) summary of research on Maori fortications he
identies ecological, political, and symbolic perspectives. The
ecological model, originally conceived by Vayda (1960), suggests
that seizing cleared gardens from neighboring groups became less
difcult than nding and clearing new land as the population grew.
The political model interprets the distribution of larger
82 M.D. McCoy / Journal of Archaeological Science 84 (2017) 74e94

Fig. 2. General model for the spatial distribution of Maori fortications in New Zealand. It is well established that the majority of fortications and other pre-European contact era
archaeological sites are found in the warmer northern region of New Zealand, especially in coastal environments, as shown in this example of site predictive model (Leathwick,
2000:Fig. 3).

fortications in ecologically rich areas as reecting the consolida-
tion of resources and power by chiefdoms (Allen, 1994, 1996, 2008;
Earle, 1997) and the symbolic model sees fortications as symbols
in larger Maori cosmology (Barber, 1996).
5.1. Temporal GBD and the fortication of New Zealand
GBD can be used to create a geospatial-temporal model of the
fortication of New Zealand. As noted, the date for the onset of
fortications is around 1500 CE and the preference for fortication
construction in northern, warmer locations better suited for
farming have already been determined in previous studies. Here
radiocarbon dates from across New Zealand were used to estimate
the distribution of evidence for fortication use over time slices to
allow us to determine if geographic preference is something that
was evident from the earliest periods, or did it vary over time (see
also McFadgen et al., 1994). To approximate the spatial distribution
of population e a factor currently not currently quantied in the
study area e the frequency of radiocarbon dates will be used to
model population distribution from settlement (1250 CE) through
the period of fortication use. The methods applied here are
adapted from Chaput et al. (2015).
5.1.1. Sources of data
The primary source of archaeological data for this study is an
archived radiocarbon database created by the Waikato Radiocarbon
Lab called NZ C14 Data (version 0.5) (http://www.waikato.ac.nz/
nzcd/C14kml.kmz) (Fig. 3). Created about 15 years ago to
 M.D. McCoy / Journal of Archaeological Science 84 (2017) 74e94
Fig. 3. Geospatial Database Radiocarbon Dates in New Zealand. This image shows an archived geospatial database (kmz) created by Waikato Radiocarbon Lab.
compliment an online database of radiocarbon dates (www.
waikato.ac.nz), the database includes n 1671 dates. The data-
base is remarkably rich with over three times the density as the
North American coverage in the CARD database, the bases for
Chaput et al. (2015), over a much shorter time frame (~700 yrs, as
opposed to 12.5 ky). It is in a Google Earth format (kmz), which was
still new at the time it was created, and has a clear disclaimer that it
comes with no claims of quality. The online database however does
have a great deal of relevant metadata.
Environmental data for this study was sourced from the New
Zealand government's Land Information (LINZ) division and was
created as part of the Land Environments of New Zealand (LENZ)
classication (Fig. 4). This included a polygon layer of the country
representing the main islands and over 900 offshore islands that
was ltered in this study to include only the four largest islands
(North Island, South Island, Steward Island, Great Barrier Island) for
ease of processing. To give a general approximation of the climate at
different locations a layer of average modern temperature was used
with the caveat that there are known shifts in the climate over the
period of human occupation of New Zealand in the pre-European
era (1250e1769 CE), notably the Little Ice Age.
83
5.1.2. Methods
The archaeological geospatial database (NZ C14 Data) under-
went a number edits, transformations, and lters to generate raster
time-slices of population and fortication distribution. These steps
are summarized below: 1) Assembling Archived Data, 2) Adding
Environmental Variable to Data, 3) Coding Site Type, 4) Coding
Temporal Values, 5) Spatial Sampling, and 6) Raster Interpolations.
Assembling Archived Data. The point layer format (kmz) of NZ
C14 Data was transferred to ESRI's ArcMap 10.3. Locational infor-
mation (lat, long) and radiocarbon lab identication transferred
easily, however, other data (site type, material dated) did not
migrate smoothly. It was necessary to search the online database
using radiocarbon lab identication numbers to re-attach this in-
formation to records. Once complete, a point shapele was created
in ArcMap that was transformed to a local datum and projection
(NZ 2000 Map Grid).
Adding Environmental Variable to Data. To allow the results to be
quantied relative to the local climate where radiocarbon dated
materials were found, a raster representing mean annual modern
temperature was used to add a eld (Temperature) to the point
record. Some points (n 199) were outside of the raster and
84 M.D. McCoy / Journal of Archaeological Science 84 (2017) 74e94
Fig. 4. Average Modern Temperature and Distribution of Radiocarbon Dates. Temperature ranges from 6.0 C (black) to 16.2 C (white). Sources: LINZ, Waikato Radiocarbon Lab.
Data reproduced with the permission of Landcare Research New Zealand Limited.
excluded from the analysis. Excluding so many records was not
ideal, however, since there did not appear to be any systematic
error that caused them to be outside the environmental raster, the
analysis moved forward.
Coding Site Type. The native classication of radiocarbon dates
by site type included 43 recognized types including several types of
fortications. In practice, there were 47 unique site types coded in
the dataset, mainly due to typos in the original data. To simplify
how sites were coded a new eld called Grouped_Type was
created with 10 options, one for fortications and the remainder
based on broad formal/functional designations.
Coding Temporal Values. The most time consuming aspect of this
analysis was ltering, classifying, and coding temporal information.
First, the recent and brief period of human occupation of New
Zealand means that one must have a protocol for interpreting
radiometric results that overlap. In addition, there is question of in-
built age in unidentied charcoal (see Dye, 2015 for a recent dis-
cussion of this issue). Smith (2010) outlined one such protocol in
which dates were included or excluded based on material type and
sorted in to Early, Middle, Late, and Historical periods as well as
overlapping periods (e.g., Early-Middle, Middle-Late). This yields
good results but of course requires a great deal of individual eval-
uation of dates in terms acceptability of material and distribution of
multiple intercept dates at 1- and 2-sigma. To make it possible to
process a large number of dates, a rule-based ltering was required.
In this case, all material was classied as either identied terrestrial
charcoal, marine shell or bone, or other. No attempt was made to
lter out long-lived verses short-lived charcoal among the identi-
ed charcoal since the way the material was reported was not well-
suited for searching and classifying.
Second, radiocarbon dates were calibrated using Calib 7.1
(Stuiver et al., 2017). Terrestrial charcoal was calibrated using the
Southern Hemisphere curve (SHcal13) and marine material using
the recommended marine calibration (MARINE13) as described in
Smith (2010). Dates with greater than 1000 CRA were ltered out to
exclude most dates on pre-human natural phenomenon, and dates
 M.D. McCoy / Journal of Archaeological Science 84 (2017) 74e94
equal to or less than 120 CRA were ltered out from analysis as
being too recent. For this analysis the resulting mean intercept date
was used to put dates in to century scale periods and these were
given cultural period names adapted from Smith (2010) with the
addition of Natural to account for periods that likely include all or
some dates that pre-date human settlement of New Zealand in
1250 CE.
Spatial Sampling. As Chaput et al. (2015) note, over-sampling is a
major concern in these types of analysis since there will be some
sites, and regions, that have far more dates than others, as without
some spatial sampling would appear more active than is war-
ranted. In this case, most sites (~60%) have a single date in any given
period, and for these it was straight forward to code them as pre-
sent/absent for each period. For the remaining sites, these were also
coded as present/absent for each time period regardless of the
number of dates within that period.
Raster Interpolations. Raster were created based on the method
described in Chaput et al. (2015) using a kerging density function
(ArcMap 10.2) with a search radius of 600 km (Figs. 5 and 6). These
were normalized using the highest density results (using the Raster
Calculator function), to the Middle Period (mean dates of
1500e1600 AD). The coastline of New Zealand creates an edge ef-
fect, complicated by the fact that some dates (n 19 out of 495) are
mis-located off the coast. Therefore, two methods were run; one
where there was no spatial constraint on the raster, and then the
results was clipped to the island polygon layer, and another where
the island polygon layer was used to restrict the raster calculation.
5.1.3. Results
The estimate of fortication and population distribution yields
three generalized phases. First, in the period before fortication,
the population distribution was remarkably uniform across the
islands, with indications that the South Island may have been more
Fig. 5. Distribution of Radiocarbon Dates: Population. This time series shows all radiocarbon dates as a proxy for spatial distribution of population (after Chaput et al., 2015). See text
for description of periods.
85
heavily used. Second, concurrent with the earliest signs of forti-
cations, evidence of human activity is shifts to the North Island, and
the earliest fortications show a preference for the North Island
that is consistent through 1400e1600 CE. Third, the phase when we
see the beginning of sustained contact with Europeans, 1600e1800
CE, activity on the South Island continues to fall, although we do
nd the rst dates of fortications in the far southern reaches of the
South Island. This last trend is represented on both the unrestricted
and coast-restricted rasters, although the later leaves off the
southernmost date from a fortication.
The geospatial trends identied are also seen in modern mean
temperature at the locations where radiocarbon dates were re-
ported. Fig. 7 shows the range of values in different site classica-
tions (pa, non-pa, all dates). There is a consistent preference for
warmer climates for fortications over time, broadening in the nal
periods; as well as a shift from activity that reects no preference,
or possibly a southern/colder preference, to activity shifting toward
the temperature range of fortications.
5.2. Site records GBD and the distribution of fortications (Pa)
GBD of fortications in New Zealand are a good example of the
difference between professional (privately maintained and
restricted) and publically available site records. As noted above, in
New Zealand the spatial distribution of fortications is not in
dispute, nor is the value of science and scientic facts, and so it is
largely unnecessary to make such a comparison. But, given that in
the United State at the moment there is a real danger to the authority
and value of scientic data, specically when it is perceived as an
impediment to economic development, it is in archaeology's interest
to be able to clearly show that professional site records, while often
kept from the public view to avoid looting, do exist and are the tip of
the iceberg when compared with sites that are better known.
86 M.D. McCoy / Journal of Archaeological Science 84 (2017) 74e94

Fig. 6. Distribution of Radiocarbon Dates: Fortication. This time series shows all radiocarbon dates as a proxy for spatial distribution of population (after Chaput et al., 2015). See
text for description of periods.

Fig. 7. Average Temperature at Locations with Radiocarbon Dates. When organized by time series, it appears that fortications favored warmer areas from their rst appearance and
grew to include colder regions through time. The general trend for the proxy for population distribution appears to shift toward warmer locations over time with a broad range of
environments occupied throughout.

5.2.1. Sources of data
The New Zealand Archaeological Association (NZAA) has been
responsible for the systemically documentation of archaeological
sites for decades, rst as a paper record (also known as the
Archaeological Site Recording Scheme), and today as ArchSite
(archsite.org.nz). Although the NZAA partners with government
agencies, it is an independent charity created to protect New
Zealand's cultural heritage and to publish, promote and foster
research into archaeology. The site database is also a resource for
local tribal cultural resource managers, although Maori continue to
be under-represented in archaeology (Rika-Heke, 2010). In the
early days of the online database there was some concern from
indigenous scholars that it would be commercial scheme; it
nonetheless remains non-prot and governed by a board drawn
 M.D. McCoy / Journal of Archaeological Science 84 (2017) 74e94
from the NZAA membership and web administrator who approves
changes and additions to the database (Bickler, personal
communication).
The ArchSite web portal has a public face where one can browse
a map of 68,753 archaeological sites across the country. Visitors are
blocked from zooming in to a scale that might give away the spe-
cic location of sites and full access to the geospatial database is
granted only to members of the NZAA. This is an integrated data-
base with key information its history (older site identication
number, current identication number, last time the record was
updated, if its location has migrated from white-paper records or
GPS, etc.). It also includes a much cleaner site type classication
than was in use when the NZ C14 Data was created so it is
straightforward to identify the 7314 fortication (pa) across the
country.
The public data of fortications was created by Land Information
New Zealand (LINZ) based on government topographic maps
(1:150,000 scale) that has migrated to GIS (Fig. 8). It includes 2135
locations and is available for download at LINZ (linz.govt.nz). It is
also currently hosted on OpenStreetMaps.org. While it is not con-
nected to the professional database, both list the traditional name
of fortication, if known, and in some cases it would be possible to
link them through location.
For this study, it was critical that the locations of sites in Arch-
Site, the professional archaeological database, were not inadver-
tently revealed. To do this, a polygon layer representing New
Zealand's Map Grid system was used to summarize the distri-
bution of sites. Map Grid is already used as the rst alpha-numeric
in site records in New Zealand (for example, site P05/214 is located
in map grid reference location P05). Reference grid vary slightly
across the country but generally are about 7.5 km (N-S) x 5.0 km (E-
W), covering about 37.5 square kilometers. Also, since grids go
Fig. 8. Distribution of Public and Professional Site Records of Fortications. Note that site locations are masked by using a polygon layer representing the NZ map grid. Sources: LINZ,
ArchSite.
87
beyond the coastline, no points were left out of the analysis due to
their mislocation relative to the coast.
5.2.2. Methods
The archaeological geospatial databases e the professional
database (ArchSite) and the public database (LINZ-Pa-pts) e un-
derwent a number transformations and lters to generate vector
layer representing fortication distribution. These steps are sum-
marized below: 1) Frequency of All Known Sites (ArchSite); 2)
Fortications from Professional Records (ArchSite); and 3) Counting
Fortications from Public Records (LINZ-Pa-pts).
Frequency of All Known Sites (ArchSite). A transitional shapele
was created where the frequency of all sites currently recorded in
ArchSite within an individual polygon of the NZ map grid was
calculated as well as the density of site records.
Fortications from Professional Records (ArchSite). Another tran-
sitional shapele was created where the frequency of fortication
sites currently listed in ArchSite within an individual polygon of the
NZ map grid was calculated as well as the density of site records.
Counting Fortications from Public Records (LINZ-Pa-pts). A nal
shapele was created where the frequency of publically known
sites (LINZ, NZ topo maps) within an individual polygon of the NZ
map grid was calculated as well as the density of site records.
5.2.3. Results
The results show how surprisingly poorly a public geospatial
database represents the actual geographic distribution and density
of fortications. Fortications are present in ~20% of all map grid
polygons. To put that in more meaningful terms, at any given place
in New Zealand there is a 20% chance that a fortication is within a
1e2 h walk. The public records of fortications alone would un-
derestimate how common fortications are across space
88 M.D. McCoy / Journal of Archaeological Science 84 (2017) 74e94
dramatically. There is even less correspondence when we compare
the density of fortications in the public and professional data-
bases. It is exceedingly rare that the two correspond to within 10%
of one another; this is true for only with less than 2% of locations.
This same data to infer that a further ~30% of New Zealand has no
fortication recorded, although other sites have been recorded in
that area, and an additional half of country has no archaeological
site recorded in the professional site record system.
5.3. Remote sensing GBD and the mapping of fortications (Pa)
GBD can be used to create 3D models of fortications of New
Zealand and are a good example of how embryonic geospatial
datasets can improve without necessarily getting big. The NZAA's
ArchSite database includes links to site maps, and for most forti-
cations, these come from a brief site visit many years ago when a
not-to-scale map was drawn of the defenses (ditches, banks) and
internal earthworks (terraces, pits). These are extremely valuable as
in many cases they are our only eld map of the site. Site records are
also updated, where possible, with GPS locations of major features,
and there has been an effort to include air photos (Jones, 2007). For
this use of GBD, I wanted to show how airborne LiDAR from
immediately in and around a fortication can also be used to
visualize the site, but more importantly, how that can grow the size
of a single site record.
5.3.1. Sources of data
Since the purpose of this study is to show how new visualiza-
tions of a fortication can grow the size of a geodatabase I began by
selecting a site that I created a DEM using airborne LiDAR data
several years ago, called Puketona Pa (Fig. 9). Puketona Pa is classed
as a Hill Pa on an isolated natural hill above the Waitangi River in
the Northland District. The features present (terraces, defensive
ditches, pits) are typical of fortications (pa) and the fortied in-
ternal area at the summit covers ~20,000 m2 putting it in the large
size class (5000e40,000 m2), putting it in with fortications that
may serve as either internal or external power bases (Marshall,
2004:77). Oral history describes the occupation of the site in the
generations prior to European contact and conrms it was indeed a
political center of some importance.
The purpose of creating the LiDAR derived DEM was to have
remotely sensed imagery in advance of a site visit. The original
source of the airborne LiDAR was a survey funded by the Northland
Regional Council in the wake of a serious ooding of the Waitangi
River in 2007. The DEM was created using Nearest Neighbor func-
tion at a high resolution (0.25  0.25 m) in order to dene the edges
of earthworks and covered an around of about 90 ha. To reduce the
size of down-stream digital products in this visualization, and since
the site occupies a much smaller portion of that area, a selection of
2 ha was used here reducing the baseline DEM from greater than
60 MB to less than 8 MB.
5.3.2. Methods
The DEM of Puketona Pa underwent a number transformations
to generate layers representing the fortication. These steps are
summarized below: 1) Deriving Relief Visualizations; and 2) 3D
Model Fly-Through.
Deriving Relief Visualizations. To create a number of different
types of visualizations I used the Relief Visualization Toolbox (RVT)
(http://iaps.zrc-sazu.si/en/rvt#v) created by Kokalj and the team at
the Institute of Anthropological and Spatial Studies (Kokalj et al.,
2013). The standalone executable version of the toolkit was used
to make, in just over 1 min of processing time, 11 functions:
Analytical hillshading (HS), Hillshading from multiple directions
(AHS), PCA of hillshading (PCA), Slope gradient (SLOPE), Simple
local relief model (SLRM), Sky-View Factor (SVF), Anisotropic Sky-
View Factor (SVF-A), Openness e Positive (OPEN-POS), Openness
e Negative (OPEN-NEG), Sky illumination (SIM), and Local domi-
nance (LD). Each function produced two versions (32-bit, 8-bit), for
a total of 22 individual rasters. Almost all rasters were useful rep-
resentations of the site (Fig. 10); only the Sky illumination (SIM)
and Local dominance (LD) functions, when applied at RTV's default
settings, did not produce rasters with enough variance for
visualization.
3D Model Fly-Through. To create an example of a 3D model y
through of Puketona Pa, I rst created a slope layer for the original
DEM and then clipped it to a circle (460 m diameter) around the
center of the site. The resulting layer was opened in ESRI's ArcScene
to create a y-through video (.avi) where z-dimension was derived
from the DEM. The short video (25 s, 1048  796) is a brief tour
around the site (Fig. 11).
5.3.3. Results
The methods and digital products here are not new to archae-
ology - in fact many innovative uses of 3D data have specically
targeted hillforts (for a recent PhD dissertation on the topic, see
O'Driscoll, 2016) - and it is well-established that it can be bene-
cial to carry out a more detailed desktop survey using lidar data
and other sources, such as standard aerial photographs, and taking
this information into the eld instead of, or together with, the
simple lidar derived imagery (English Heritage, 2010:38). What
might be surprising is that while the les created are a great deal
larger than the scans of paper les currently stored on the ArchSite
website (an order of magnitude in the case of 32-bit rasters and the
video), they are not that large in absolute terms. If we scaled these
up to include similar les for all 7000 fortications, it would be
less than a few terabytes, and scaled up again to the 64,000 sites
in all of New Zealand, it would t on a handful of servers. Having
said that, if one automated the production of these visualizations,
there would have to be a way to lter out results like the SIM and LD
to keep from creating a lot of raster les with no useable image (See
Table 3).
What this back-of-the-envelope calculation demonstrates is
that although LiDAR and other remote sensing data are genuinely
unwieldy GBD, the types of digital products that are of direct in-
terest to archaeology need not be. In other words, it is possible to
reap the benet of large volume GBD (LiDAR) without necessarily
increasing the volume of archaeological GBD to a point where they
become equally unwieldly.
6. Discussion: standalone quality reporting
I have been guided in this paper by three questions: 1) What
kinds of geospatial data are available today? 2) How will larger and
more accessible geospatial databases shape the near future of
archaeology? And, using a case study from New Zealand, 3) What
can we do now about our apprehensions regarding data quality,
privacy, and volume?
First, we are a eld that values locational information but
archaeology is also a profession with an obligation to keep that
information away from those who would misuse it. Even with that
important caveat, one would think that it would be straightforward
to identify large, complex, geospatial datasets on site locations,
artifacts, architecture, radiocarbon dates, and so on, given trends
like web based GIS, open access publishing, volunteer geography,
and Big Data science. There are indeed some outstanding archae-
ological geodatabases out there that are a testament to tenacity,
and generosity, of those who create and contribute to them. But, on
the whole, these are small oases in what continues to be a data
desert.
Fig. 9. Web Maps with Puketona Pa (Site P05/214). Sources (top to bottom): OpenStreetMap, Google Earth, Topomapnz, Archsite (public view).
90 M.D. McCoy / Journal of Archaeological Science 84 (2017) 74e94

Fig. 10. Terrain Relief Visualizations of Puketona Pa. From clockwise from top left: slope (64 to 1), multi-hs, pca, srlm, open-neg, open-pos (150e58), svf-a (1e0.4), svf (255e0),
and eld map from site record (not-to-scale).

Fig. 11. Screen Capture from Video Fly Through of 3D Model of Puketona Pa. Areas of high slope (white) contrast with at areas (black).

Second, what happens when our data desert turns in to a data
ocean is largely up to us and how we deal with the datasets we
have and collect today. As spatial technology has evolved and
become integrated in to the practice of archaeology, we are dealing
with challenges posed by the sheer size and complexity of data we
use and produce. Field survey and excavations regularly yield far
more pieces of spatial information than ever before. At the same
time, the amount of available satellite imagery, airborne lidar, and
other remote sensing and environmental datasets increase in size
and complexity. In this context, sharing data will become an ever
more delicate balance between privacy, quality, and the potential
benets of being able to show the world what we have found. We
can see this especially in how we construct culture histories, how
we make decisions using archaeological geospatial data, and visu-
alize archaeology for research and for the public.
Third, the case study I presented here is a good example of how
 M.D. McCoy / Journal of Archaeological Science 84 (2017) 74e94 91

Table 3
Estimated Storage Size of Visualizations. The digital products from this study for Puketona Pa would take the current 1 MB of les associated with the site up to 469 MB.

Puketona Pa Estimated Total for All Fortications (GB) Estimated Total for All Sites (TB)
Data Stored (MB)

Current ArchSite (scans of paper les) 1 9 0.1

DEM (region, 90 ha) 63 461 4
DEM (large site, 2 ha) 8 56 1
Relief Visualization (32-bit) 119 870 8
Relief Visualization (8-bit) 25 186 2
Fly-Through Video (desktop, 25 s) 254 1858 17

Table 4
Suggested Questions for Standalone Quality Reports on the Use of Geospatial Big Data in Archaeology. The specic data qualities listed here were modied from Merino et al.
(2016). This type of document is in line with the London Charter (Denard, 2012) principle of documentation for computer-based visualization of cultural heritage.

Qualities Adequacy Question Improvement Question

Contextual relevant and complete What is the intellectual justication for using
this data for the task?
unique and semantically interoperable Are there known duplicate or semantically
redundant records in the new data?
semantically accurate How does the data represent real entities?
credible What criteria were used to assess the credibility
of data relative to the task?
condential Was the primary data accessible to the analyst?
compliant Does the data meet regulations and standards?
Temporal time-concurrent How is the data grouped by time periods?
current Is original data an archived (static) or
integrative database (updated)?
timely Are there known data from ongoing project or
other new data not included in this database?
frequent Is space-time trend analysis possible?
time-consistent Is time represented coherently?
Operational available, recoverable, accessible What logistical barriers were there to gaining
access to the data?
authorized What restrictions have the stewards of the
original data placed on the data?
similar data types, precision, portable Are there technical barriers to working with the
data?
efcient Is the native data model appropriate to the
intended task?
traceable How can one trace access and changes to the
data?
What changes from the primary data were
made, if any, to assure the data was relevant and
complete?
What changes were made, if any, to eliminate
duplicate or semantically redundant records?
What changes were made, if any, to how the
data represent real entities?
What data, if any, was ltered due to a question
of credibility?
What has been done to protect the primary data
from inappropriate use?
Does the newly derived data meet relevant
regulations and standards?
What changes, if any, where made to how data
is grouped by time periods?
How does the database identify when was data
collected?
Has the primary data been updated/modied
for the task at hand?
Have changes been made to make space-time
trend analysis possible?
Were changes made to make time represented
coherently?
How, if at all, did logistical barriers to accessing
primary data shape this new data?
What restrictions are there on this new data for
secondary use?
What improvements were made to overcome
technical barriers to working with the data?
Was the native data model changed for the
intended task?
Were previous changes to primary data known
to the creators of this new dataset?

we might take a data quality-in-use approach to GBD in archae-
ology. In the rst example, I used an archived geodatabase of
radiocarbon dates to estimate the spread of populations and forti-
cations in New Zealand. In the analysis I discovered a number of
data quality problems: a lack of accurate site location data meant
many radiocarbon dates could not be compared with environ-
mental data; site types used in the database were not ideal for the
project and contained typos; calibration and assigning radiocarbon
dates to century-scale temporal bins raised a number of issues and
required lowering quality protocols; and interpolation was inu-
enced by an edge effect along the coast that again was complicated
by a lack of site location accuracy. As described above, some of these
problems were solved by ltering problematic data out of the
analysis and/or improving the dataset by creating new elds, such
as the grouped site type and time periods. The second example also
demonstrates how the need to keep archaeological site locations
condential complicates analysis. In that case I lowered the reso-
lution of the information on the two site databases in the digital
end products (i.e., maps, data) by summarizing them using an
arbitrary grid (NZ Map Grid). I view that as an improvement in that
it makes it possible to share the results without putting archaeo-
logical sites in greater danger of looting. In my last example, I
created a number of digital representations of a single site (Puke-
tona Pa) that are ultimately derived from airborne LiDAR. I found
that while the underlying LiDAR data is large, that including visu-
alizations based on relief and video improved the site record
without necessarily creating an insurmountable problem with data
volume.
This information on the adequacy of the datasets used, and the
improvements made, are absolutely necessary for anyone who
would use the original dataset or the digital products of the
research presented here. To that end, I suggest we need to require
new analyses using GBD come with a Standalone Quality Report. The
International Organization for Standardization (ISO) reference on
geographic information e data quality (ISO 19157:2013(E)) denes
a standalone quality report as free text document providing fully
detailed information about data quality evaluations, results and
measures used. In the case of archaeology, a data quality report
would need to describe information about original archaeological
geospatial dataset and the data derived for a specic task such as
92 M.D. McCoy / Journal of Archaeological Science 84 (2017) 74e94
archaeological research, assessment, documentation, or visual
representation. It would need to be supplementary to administra-
tive and technical information contained in metadata; in technical
terms the report would paradata (data published alongside data).
I would nd narrative descriptions of the adequacy of existing
data and improvements useful in a Standalone Quality Report, but
we would also do well to include some standardized questions that
will make future searches easier (Kintigh, 2015). Table 4 gives an
example of the types of questions that might be included in a
Standalone Quality Report. One set examines the initial adequacy of
the existing geodatabase for the task described, the second asks
about the improvements made, if any, for the study. The quality
categories are adapted based on suggested evaluations of Big Data
in terms of contextual, temporal, and operational adequacy and
improvements (Merino et al., 2016). Interestingly, Big Data science
has become increasingly concerned with how it performs in the
temporal dimension (e.g., when does the data pertain to, when was
it recorded) in part because of the volume of streaming data.
I will be the rst to say that the data quality-in-use approach
sounds a great deal like opening the door to messy research done
with big, bad data e and this is why the Standalone Quality Report
is so important. We need to use our core disciplinary values
regarding data quality and privacy and apply them to GBD. A quality
report will increase the visibility of our siloed datasets and talk
about why that information is siloed in ways that make it more
visible and resilient to being lost to those who would deny scientic
data. Equally importantly, if we begin to publish our data with
standalone quality reports where we acknowledge the improve-
ments we are making, we are encouraging an professional culture
were we work cumulatively, improving upon geospatial data,
rather than creating datasets that are used for one task and then
abandoned.
7. Conclusions
I describe geospatial datasets in archaeology today as oases in a
data desert, that would one day become a data ocean as we create
more, and larger, datasets that are more easily discoverable and
accessible. The most immediate pay off of this trend will be in terms
of having access to all available relevant data. Due to natural
taphonomic processes and modern development, the archaeolog-
ical record is by denition an incomplete set of material evidence;
evidence we destroy by excavating. Not only is it in our interest to
know what information already exists that might answer our
questions, without it we are more likely to needlessly destroy sites
in pursuit of redundant data.
The question of how to deal with GBD touches all our ethical
obligations (e.g., SAA principles: stewardship, accountability,
commercialization, public education and outreach, intellectual
property, public reporting and publication, records and preserva-
tion, training and resources). We are seeing progress on this front in
the success of archival databases (ADS, tDAR) and the promotion of
best practices through the responsible use of available integrated
databases. As these evolve, it would be excellent to see geoportal
data platforms that connect related databases; that is, healthy data
silos that are visible, but not fully accessible.
The development of GBD in archaeology offers new ways to
engage with other scientists, stakeholder communities, and the
public. I have no doubt that GBD will be the basis for writing culture
histories in the foreseeable future, and it will be the way forward
for interdisciplinary research as other elds grow to discover all
that we have already learned. These same efforts will reveal more
ways to involve the public as participants in discovery and
stewardship.
These benets e data access, ethics, and broader engagement e
to a skeptical ear will sound like the same platitudes that are
dragged out every time archaeology discovers a new digital toy to
play with. But, I would argue, that there are good reasons to think
that these benets will materialize. My optimism comes from ex-
amples of GBD that already exist and the parallel trends that are
directly or indirectly dealing with GBD, in terms of cyber-
infrastructure (Yang et al., 2010), and spatial analyses (Ortman
et al., 2015).
We must get on with the task of using massive amounts of
descriptive geospatial data in a fashion that is scientic (testable,
replicable, etc.), authentic (a faithful representation of our obser-
vations on the archaeological record and the human past), and
ethical (protection of cultural resources). Information on the ade-
quacy of the datasets used, and improvements made, are absolutely
necessary if we are to deal with apprehensions over data quality,
privacy, and volume. I suggest we need to require new analyses
using GBD come with a Standalone Quality Report to go beyond the
usual administrative metadata. This small change is something that
can be implemented now to the benet of large and growing body
of knowledge about the human past.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Marieka Brouwer-Burg and Meghan Howey for their
invitation the SAA session and for organizing this special issue. This
paper has evolved thanks to lively discussions with my colleagues
in Southern Methodist University's Big Data Working Group and a
grant from the Maguire Ethics Center. Special thanks to all my
colleagues and students who have helped me form the opinions
expressed here: Michael Aiuvalasit, Nick Belluzzo, Simon Bickler,
Emma Brooks, Steve Burrow, Jesse Casana, Maria Codlin, Ann
Horsburgh, Ian Jorgeson, James Flexner, David Meltzer, Andrew
Martindale, Stace Maples, Thegn Ladefoged, Cliff Patterson, Leslie
Reeder-Myers, Nico Tripcevich, Robert Wayumba, and Joshua Wells.
Trying to capture the evolution of spatial technology in archaeology
at any one time is a daunting task and I am grateful to three
anonymous reviewers who helped guide my search and press me to
look forward to the future.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data related to this article can be found at http://
dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2017.06.003.
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