A GIS ANALYSIS OF MOUND SPACING AT THE TOLTEC SITE, CENTRAL ARKANSAS

This paper presents a new approach to quantifying the spacing of prehistoric earthworks at the Toltec site (3LN42) in central Arkansas. Distances between the site's nineteen mounds and enclosing embankment have previously been interpreted as expressing a regular "module" of 47.5 meters. As the exact location of many of the mounds is not known, however, choosing locations for measurement is somewhat subjective. This approach employs a database created by digitizing mound locations at high resolution and measuring all possible combinations of distances to and from mounds within the site (a total of over 15 million observations at the resolution used). The database of measurements is analyzed using statistical time-series techniques to determine significant distance frequencies. This technique could be applied to quantify the spacing of entities even when the exact locations are not known.