Iron Age pedestrians at Kerkenes Dag: An archaeological GIS-T approach to movement and transportation (Turkey, England)

Walking is a critical dynamic practice that has largely been overlooked in archaeological studies. There has been a tendency to focus on static places as the loci for activity rather than on the movement that infuses life into those places. This study seeks to move beyond this by innovating new methods, applicable to the ancient world, for exploring the dynamic forces of movement and transportation as well as the tasks and projects that they enable. Using the examples of the Iron Age city at Kerkenes Dag in Central Turkey and the modern City Centre of Cambridge in England, a pedestrian Transportation Geographical Information System (GIS-T) methodology is developed and applied. It incorporates physiological models of human locomotion with appropriately scaled data and a theoretical framework grounded in time-geography to provide a powerful basis and range of tools with which we can undertake archaeological transportation analysis.