Funk Foundation Fellowships for Archaeological Research

Research Results

Lighthouse Cove: A Beacon on the Early and Middle Woodland, by
Angela Labrador, graduate student, University of Massachusetts at
Amherst (for scholarly journal article and/or presentation at the 2006
conference of Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in
Archaeology, in Fargo, North Dakota)

Labrador ‘will undertake a ceramic “attribute analysis of technical
choice”…which will identify a vessel as the unit of analysis and measure a
range of attribute states. This is in contrast to the typological approach, in
which the presence or absence of diagnostic attributes (e.g. rim profiles or
decoration) is valued. By recording a range of attribute states, [she] will be
able to discern patterns of interdependent behavioral “modes” of
manufacturing techniques and formal concepts. These behavioral patterns
reflect the choices of the individual artist as well as the customs of the
artist’s community. [Labrador] will apply Knowledge Discovery methods
during the analysis of her data set. Knowledge Discovery is an
interdisciplinary field in the Computer Sciences that draws upon statistics,
artificial intelligence, database technology, and visualization to extract
previously unknown information from large data sets. By using Knowledge
Discovery tools, [one] can recognize the “incompleteness” of the
archaeological dataset and focus on the act of “variable construction” which
takes place during the identification process. With the combination of these
two methods, [Labrador will] expect to bring to light more evidence of
variability in the technological process of ceramics production and usage
within the regional type-sequences…. [Her] study will provide a compliment
to a typological sequencing of the ceramics excavated at Lighthouse Cove,
help shed light on the complex ways in which the inhabitants of the Tivoli
Bay region adapted to their environment 2000 years ago, and contribute to
the cultural-ecological approach that Robert Funk proposed’ [for the Hudson
Valley] (Labrador 2005, here without references)