One example is using GIS to determine if the patterns we see in archaeological sites reflect ancient human behavior or if it’s just where we happened to look.
Hypothetically, let’s say we find 70% of sites within 400 m of rivers, 20% within 100 m of a lake, and 10% more than 900 m from a major water source. It would be easy to determine using GIS that these populations preferred areas near rivers, but this could be because 90% of the surveys are done near rivers. Custom workflows designed to look at survey coverage, environmental variables, and site locations would help us to determine if there is a pattern or if it is sampling bias.
Please note: All percentages in this example are hypothetical and were made up for this example. They are not based on actual archaeological data.
