The Thesis Proposal

I thought it would be a good idea to share a shortened version of my honors thesis proposal.

During the 1950s, the University of Minnesota’s Messenia Expedition (UMME) established archaeological surface survey in Greece in order to understand the interaction between humans and their environment. In recent years, archaeological survey has evolved to recognize the importance of interdisciplinary interaction in understanding how the natural environment affected human populations and the cultural material they left behind. Archaeologists are developing new methodologies for systematically collecting data with the intent to involve interdisciplinary specialists such as geologists and natural scientists. The Eastern Korinthia Survey uses this interdisciplinary approach to gain a fuller understanding of how Greek people interacted in this diverse commercial environment over time. However, problems emerge at the basic data collecting level that further confounds the process of later interpretation.

Ultimately, in order to draw historical conclusions about the population, social organization and the ancient economy of the Eastern Korinthia, the survey data needs to be effectively interpreted. This process has not yet been accomplished because inconsistency and insignificant fields of data burden the EKAS interpretation. This thesis requires an intensive look at the data collected on the land cover, surface visibility and the artifact density of a selected sample of survey units in the Eastern Korinthia. The purpose is to sort through this data and break it down into smaller, more manageable partitions in order to produce a relationship between artifact recovery rates and the visibility and vegetation cover within each unit.

This thesis is intended to aid the progress of change in the way archaeological survey data is collected in Greece and throughout the Mediterranean. The reality is that time is limited in archaeological field survey. This time must be spent collecting data in the most efficient and accurate manner in order to draw later conclusions concerning the human-environment relationship. My thesis will analyze the Eastern Korinthia Survey data and methods in comparison with my own collected data and the methods of other recent archaeological surveys in order to present suggestion for future change. The analysis of the raw data itself presented in this thesis will ultimately improve how the data in EKAS is used, interpreted and published in the future.