Belize River Area Predictive Model
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  • The Maya were an agrarian civilization and sustained their development over 2 millennia based on a mastery of the Maya forest.
  • By the Late Classic Period, the Maya used the landscape to its fullest – from cities, to farm settlements, and areas used but not settled
  • Few studies have focused on their agrarian foundations but this is fundamental to ancient Maya development
  • Today we are introducing our predictive model….. A product of several years work.
The Maya Area

The Belize Area with the study focus in white
Assessing Land Use Hypotheses
  • Use of tools available in standard GIS packages (ArcView and ArcGIS)
  • Simulation of spatial distributions using landscape weighting factors developed in work using Weights of Evidence - WofE
  • WofE is integrated into a GIS software package, ESRI's ArcView 3.2
  • WofE origins are in mining geology
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Theme Scale & Extent Map Source Resolution Classification Transform
Soil Fertility  Belize River Valley  Digitized paper map  1:50,000 4 classes 4 classes
Jenkin et al 1976 vector
Soil Drainage Capability Belize River Valley  Digitized paper map- Jenkins et al 1976 1:50,000 4 classes 4 classes
Topography Belize River Valley  Paper official topo 40 m 1:50,000 40 meter contours DEM
Belize data vector
Rivers & Streams Belize River Valley  Paper official topo 40 m 1:50,000 Perennial and Intermittent streams Buffers
Belize data vector 400m
Lakes & Water Bodies Belize River Valley  Paper official topo 40 meter 1:50,000 all Buffers
vector 400m
Archaeological Sites Site BRASS 1.2000 Major/minor, center,  1 class
vector house sites
  Inconsistent nomenclature

 
The Predictive Model has been developed using the Weights of Evidence (WofE) extension available for ArcView GIS. The team compared map layers to known residential units of the Maya Lowlands to predict where other unknown sites might be. The dark purple areas in the map above are zones of high probability while the white areas are zones of low probability.

Geographic Themes of the WofE


Geographic factors a foundation of Maya Settlement patterns:
  • The predictive model explains 75% of settlement locations from the study area and 80% for the local area as a whole
  • For water bodies:
    • eliminated lakes, Strahler order, Belize River as contributory factors
    • verified importance of streams up to 400m
  • Validation with GPS field data in 2003/04
  • Provides a connection between contemporary tradition and ancient Maya

 

 

 

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