Reproduction and Expansion on Wheatley, 1996

In his 1996 study, David Wheatley made one of the first investigations of the Neolithic landscape of Wessex using the relatively-new-to-archaeology tool of GIS. Arguing against Renfrew (1973), Wheatley (1996) concluded that causewayed enclosures were not as central as had been supposed, and that it was in fact long barrows that occupied a more significant monumental role. More than 30 years later, this article attempts to replicate and expand upon his analysis using new data gleaned from aerial photography and new methods and computing power available to GIS, pushing back against Wheatley (1996) to reaffirm the importance of enclosures, question the role of barrows, and assert directions for future research.

This entry contains the cleaned datasets used for this reproduction and the steps taken to get to them, as well as the results of cost-distance, visibility, and viewshed analyses, as well as the detailed methods taken to produce these results.