Edited Volumes by Peter Bikoulis
Journal Articles by Peter Bikoulis
Antiquity, 2018
Anthropogenic pathways and geoglyphs comprise two of the most recognisable pre- Colombian feature... more Anthropogenic pathways and geoglyphs comprise two of the most recognisable pre- Colombian features of the Peruvian Andes. Although often found in close proximity, there has been no quantitative investigation of the relationships between these types of landscape features. To investigate, the authors performed spatial analysis and simulation modelling on a combination of unmanned aerial vehicle and surface reconnaissance data from the Sihuas River Valley pampa in southern Peru. The results suggest that these pathways and geoglyphs were closely tied, forming part of travellers’ rituals to propitiate local deities and ensure successful journey.
Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 2016
With the exception of the Nazca Lines, geoglyphs in the Andes have tended to be studied without r... more With the exception of the Nazca Lines, geoglyphs in the Andes have tended to be studied without regard to their position in the landscape. The objective of the Quilcapampa Geoglyph Survey is to better contextualize rock art by identifying and then mapping areas of high concentration of geoglyphs on the broad pampa surrounding the middle Sihuas Valley in southern Peru. This paper outlines our workflow that combines World View 2 satellite images, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) photography, and pedestrian survey to rapidly assess a 250 km 2 region. Aided by previous surface survey, the satellite imagery effectively located areas of high concentration of geoglyphs that could then be flown over by the UAV whose high resolution camera allows for the capture of features and details not readily identifiable via satellite. The documentation of Sihuas' geoglyphs aids both academic and conservation efforts in this region of Peru.
World Archaeology, 2015
Originally formulated based on marine geological research concerned with the timing and tempo of ... more Originally formulated based on marine geological research concerned with the timing and tempo of the Black Sea infilling, the Black Sea flood Hypothesis (BSfH) argues that this process was a catastrophic event ~7150 BP that greatly impacted the prehistoric peoples who lived along the ancient shoreline. The resulting mass migration of peoples led to great transformations across Europe and southwest Asia. Continued research in the region has challenged the timing and impact of the event, arguing instead that it was neither sudden nor catastrophic. However, the BSfH continues to be invoked as a plausible explanation for the lack of early Holocene or Neolithic period sites in northern Turkey. Results from spatial modelling along the Turkish coast suggest that the explanatory power of the BSfH to explain this absence is exaggerated. Rather, other environmental and social factors must be considered in explaining the complete lack of early Holocene sites across the region.
I draw attention to the distinctive agglutinative or cellular house pattern observed at numerous ... more I draw attention to the distinctive agglutinative or cellular house pattern observed at numerous prehistoric sites in Central Anatolia, and suggest that these are indicative of a suite of social relations that may have differed markedly from roughly contemporaneous village sites in southeastern Turkey and elsewhere in southwestern Asia. Looking at archaeological and architectural remains from major excavated sites such as Aşıklı Höyük, Çatalhöyük, and Canhasan, I argue that a strong local character that persists through a long period of time typifies these sites and many others in the region. This observed continuity underscores and supports views of in situ cultural development within the Anatolian interior. Rather than focusing simply on descriptions of house plan and floor area, integrative approaches explicitly working within a 'House Societies' model of social and settlement organization offer more insight into these unique cultural formations observed at early Holocene in Central Anatolia.
Anatolian Studies, 2012
Using a variety of quantitative approaches, interactions between prehistoric sites in the Göksu v... more Using a variety of quantitative approaches, interactions between prehistoric sites in the Göksu valley and south-central Anatolia are modelled within their wider multi-regional and diachronic socio-economic networks to assess the prominence and influence of communities in south-central Anatolia from the Late Chalcolithic to the end of the Early Bronze Age (c. 4200–2000 BC). Since the 1950s, some have understood the valley as significant in terms of movement and communication through the Taurus mountain chain that divides the southern Anatolian plateau from the Mediterranean coast. This view is called in to question through the application of geospatial and computational methods, namely least cost pathway and social network analyses. Archaeologists use least cost pathway analysis to model movement in the past. Similarly, social network analysis is used to model contact and interaction in the past. The approach adopted in this paper seeks to combine the two methods to investigate social structure and the nature of interaction in late prehistoric south-central Anatolia. The results suggest that views of the Göksu valley as the primary or a prominent means of connecting the southern Anatolian plateau and the Mediterranean coast may need to be reassessed.Göksu vadisindeki prehistorik yerleşimler ve güney Anadolu'nun orta kısımları arasındaki etkileşim farklı ölçüm yöntemleri kullanılarak değerlendirilmiş ve Geç Kalkolitik dönemden Erken Tunç Çağı'nın sonuna kadar (yaklaşık M.Ö. 4200–2000) çok bölgeli ve art zamanlı sosyo-ekonomik bir ağ içinde modellendirilmiştir. 1950'lerden bu yana pek çok araştırmacı güney Anadolu platosunu Akdeniz kıyılarından ayıran Toros dağları üzerindeki bu vadinin bölgesel hareket ve iletişim açısından önemli olduğu görüşünü kabul etmişlerdir. Bu görüş, jeo uzamsal ölçü araçları ve bilişimsel metotlarla, yani en düşük maliyetli yollar ve sosyal ağ analizleri uygulaması aracılığıyla sorgulanmaktadır. Arkeologlar geçmişteki hareketi modellemek için en düşük maliyetli yol analizi metodunu kullanırlar. Benzer şekilde, geçmişteki iletişim ve etkileşimi modellemek için de sosyal ağ analizi kullanılır. Bu çalışmada benimsenen yaklaşım, geç prehistorik dönemde güney Anadolu'nun orta kısımlarındaki sosyal yapıyı ve etkileşimin doğasını araştırmak için bu iki yöntemi birleştirmektir. Sonuçlar, güney Anadolu platosunu Akdeniz kıyılarına bağlayan ve bariz bir biçimde başlıca ulaşım yolu olarak karşımıza çıkan Göksu Vadisi'nin yeniden değerlendirilmesi gerektiğini düşündürmektedir.
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Book Chapters by Peter Bikoulis
Archaeology and Urban Settlement in Late Roman and Byzantine Anatolia: investigating the history of Euchaita-Avkat-Beyözü and its environment, 2018
Keep the Revolution Going: Proceedings of the 43rd Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology, 2016
This paper reports a procedure for quantitative validation for the purpose of hypothesis testing ... more This paper reports a procedure for quantitative validation for the purpose of hypothesis testing between competing archaeological network models. Two ways of forming networks are compared using a case study situated in 4th-3rd millennia BC southern Turkey. The first is created using the principal of proximity that connects network actors based on their geographical distance. This is a common approach used for networks that use location to connect actors. The second is created using the principal of effort costs, and uses Least Cost pathways between sites as a means of connecting them. These are employed as idealized routes connecting sites, taking into consideration movement between sites as the primary constraint in the formation to networks. A third set of random graphs generated using bootstrapping methods (Monte Carlo) are used to assess results between these two network creation strategies. Comparison and evaluation of the real-life network models indicates that large-scale or regional scale network models based on spatial proximity may not provide the best or ideal way of creating archaeological networks.
Landscape and Settlement Dynamics in Northern Anatolia in the Roman and Byzantine period, 2015
Papers by Peter Bikoulis
The aim of this paper is to outline an experimental survey technique carried out by a team from t... more The aim of this paper is to outline an experimental survey technique carried out by a team from the University of Toronto. For five weeks in April and May 2012, crew members surveyed part of Wadi Quseiba's drainage basin east of the Jordan Valley, and west of the modern city of Irbid. The goals of the survey were twofold: to search for late prehistoric (Epipalaeolithic, Neolithic and Chalcolithic) sites, and to test an innovative approach to surveying a large territory with limited resources. Wadi Quseiba's (Figures 1 & 2) main canyon borders the Jordan Valley, and collects runoff from two main tributaries that drain the eastern plateau, Wadi Darraba and Wadi Khadra. All three channels were surveyed in the 2012 pilot investigation. During survey, cooler, drier conditions predominated on the plateau, while hotter, more humid conditions prevailed near the Jordan Valley, where the wadi channel drops to about 200m below sea level. Winter rains not only charge these channels with runoff, leading to erosive downcutting, but also allow cereal agriculture on the lowest terraces at the western end of the drainage. Here there are also springs that would once have provided a perennial water source. In the upper portions of the drainage are found olive groves, shrubby pastures that are remnants of degraded oak forests, and very restricted areas of oak woodland. Seasonal and spatial variations in ground cover have major effects on surface visibility and the feasibility of archaeological fieldwalking survey. Our survey began after the rainy season had ended, but early enough that many crops had not yet been harvested. Consequently, survey was largely restricted to portions of the drainage where crop cover was absent or harvest had just taken place. Almost none of Wadi Quseiba has been previously surveyed, other than a single day of survey on horseback by Nelson Glueck in 1947 (Glueck 1951: 184–85) which recorded three sites (Tell Abu el-Hussein, Ras Abu Lofeh and Mendah), none of them prehistoric. The overarching goal of this survey was to experiment with ways to maximise our probability of discovering 'target' archaeological materials—in this case, late prehistoric ones—both by using a predictive model, and by employing Bayesian optimal-allocation algorithms. To facilitate this goal, the survey recording system was fully digital. Many archaeological predictive models target landscape features, the distribution of water sources, and other factors thought to have influenced ancient landscape use in order to predict where undiscovered materials might be found (Wescott & Brandon 2000; Wheatley & Gillings 2002: 157–63; Verhagen 2009). Conversely, our approach is based on the premise that, in a highly dissected environment like Wadi Quseiba, only small portions of the late prehistoric land surface survive, as wadi downcutting has completely removed much of it. Additionally, even the surviving portions are often buried by later deposits, typically colluvium from the adjacent slopes. Consequently, we used satellite imagery and GIS to identify areas of erosion and sediment accretion, development and modern farming, with the goal of flagging those modern landscape features that have the highest probability of being exposed remnants of the
Many archaeological surveys make the assumption that a single field walk by a survey team is suff... more Many archaeological surveys make the assumption that a single field walk by a survey team is sufficient to determine whether a space does or does not contain archaeological materials. Making retrodictive statements about site distributions or locational preferences relies on the accuracy of this assumption. We instead take the approach that the probability of detecting artefacts by field walking is less than 1.0 and use calibration surveys to calculate the survey teams’ ‘sweep widths’. Our calibrations took place in typical fields in which we ‘seeded’ artefacts in known locations, but otherwise simulated actual survey conditions. Sweep widths, in combination with knowledge of the total length of transects walked, then allow us to calculate survey coverage. In prehistoric surveys in the Tremithos Valley, Cyprus, and Wadi Quseiba, Jordan, continually updated estimates of coverage and its effect on the probability that survey areas contained undetected sites were crucial elements in survey planning, execution, and evaluation.
The aim of this paper is to outline an experimental survey technique carried out by a team from t... more The aim of this paper is to outline an experimental survey technique carried out by a team from the University of Toronto. For five weeks in April and May 2012, crew members surveyed part of Wadi Quseiba's drainage basin east of the Jordan Valley, and west of the modern city of Irbid. The goals of the survey were twofold: to search for late prehistoric (Epipalaeolithic, Neolithic and Chalcolithic) sites, and to test an innovative approach to surveying a large territory with limited resources.
Jordan. This survey's main goal was to discover evidence of Late Neolithic habitation and landsca... more Jordan. This survey's main goal was to discover evidence of Late Neolithic habitation and landscape use, which typical archaeological surveys in the region very rarely find. To improve the efficiency and frequency with which sites are located, we experimented with Bayesian optimal allocation methods, originally designed for naval searches during the 1940s. The survey's design began with a predictive model in a GIS environment in which we assigned prior probabilities to landscape elements thought most likely to have survived the severe alteration of the landscape that has occurred since the Neolithic in this highly eroded region. Optimal-allocation algorithms, performed iteratively on the basis of each day's survey results, guided the allocation of survey effort to spaces with high probability densities, given past survey coverage. After two survey seasons, we conducted small-scale excavations in 2014 on "candidate sites" located during survey. This paper will discuss the survey methods and briefly touch on the results of these excavations, which verified that two "candidates" were Yarmoukian and Wadi Rabah Late Neolithic sites.
Poster Presentations by Peter Bikoulis
Unpublished poster shown at The 83rd Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology (SAA)
Unpublished poster presentation shown at the 81st Annual Meeting of the Society for American Arch... more Unpublished poster presentation shown at the 81st Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Orlando, FL, USA (April 6–April 10, 2016). The poster presents details from our methodology for surveying the pampa surrounding the Sihuas Valley with a combination of satellite and drone-based images. The results from our survey work highlight the significant increase in resolution provided by our drone, which enables us to identify smaller, more detailed anthropogenic features in the landscape not seen through satellite imagery alone. Our identification processes using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to record these features, has uncovered more than a hundred geoglyphs scattered in the pampa.
Unpublished poster presentation shown at the 82nd Annual Meeting of the Society for American Arch... more Unpublished poster presentation shown at the 82nd Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology in Vancouver, BC, Canada (March 29–April 2, 2017). The poster presents some preliminary results from our analysis exploring the spatial relationships between pathways and circular geoglyphs; a common type of anthropogenic feature found on the pampa surrounding the Sihuas Valley. The results of our GIS-based analysis indicate that there is a strong correlation between the position of circular geoglyphs and the major roads that connect the valley with its neighbors.
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Edited Volumes by Peter Bikoulis
Journal Articles by Peter Bikoulis
Book Chapters by Peter Bikoulis
Papers by Peter Bikoulis
Poster Presentations by Peter Bikoulis