engleski

From Hill-fort to the Mountain Pass and Back: A Comparison of Three Pathfinding

Recognition of movement corridors through a landscape has always drew attention of archaeologists. Reconstructions of movement corridors through a landscape are based mostly on determining the most logical way in relation to the present movement patterns, the morphology of terrain and the archaeological sites pattern. Though, in this paper we have reconstructed optimal movement corridors in the area of Velebit with the help of computer methods in relation to physical characteristics of the landscape including the most dominant mountain passes in relation to the archaeological sites pattern. The analysis included prehistoric hill-forts in the area of the North Velebit Mountain along with the Vratnik and Oltari mountain passes. Since mountain passes are the lowest parts of the mountain suitable for movement corridors and intense economic use, they were chosen as the points of destination in analysis. The research aims to present comparison of three methods of least cost path calculation and comparison of the results with the existing pedestrian tracks, dirt roads and modern roads some of which are confirmed or hypothetical historical communications. First two methods are widely used and supported by corresponding software ArcMap 10.1 and IDRISI Selva 17.0. The third method was developed by the authors. The method is implemented as a script written in Python 2.7.2 programming language using Arcpy module. In contrast to the first two methods the latter calculates cost for cell to cell movement directly from the elevation data using Tobler’s equation. With the comparison of the three methods and actual path data we were able to identify the strengths and weaknesses of these methods as well as determine which of them is more suitable for application on the mountainous karst landscape such as the study area of the Velebit Mountain range, Croatia.

Movement ; ArcGIS ; Idrisi Selva ; Homo Dinaricus hiking algorithm ; Velebit

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