Deborah S Davis
Biographic Data
| ID | 193489 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Deborah S Davis |
| GIVEN NAMES | Deborah S |
| FAMILY NAME | Davis |
| SIGNATURE | DAVIS D S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Pennsylvania State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5783-3578 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 44 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 298 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 42 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1971 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
The Future of Archaeological Prospection
This editorial marks the transition of editorial leadership at Archaeological Prospection and outlines priorities for the journal's next phase. We review the journal's 30‐year history and assess opportunities created by the convergence of machine learning, miniaturized sensors and cloud computing. We identify two primary objectives: establishing rigorous standards for reproducibility and open science, and prioritizing submissions that demonstrate…
Africa-wide diversification of livelihood strategies: Isotopic insights into Holocene human adaptations to climate change
Bathymetric LiDAR and Semi‐Automated Feature Extraction Assist Underwater Archaeological Surveys
Critical data concerning key developments in global human history now lie submerged on continental shelves where investigations confront significant challenges. Whereas underwater excavations and surveys are expensive and weather dependent and require specialized training and equipment, remote sensing methods can improve chances for success offshore. A refinement in one method, a semi‐automated analysis protocol that can help to identify Pleistoc…
Archaeology in the Fourth Dimension: Studying Landscapes with Multitemporal PlanetScope Satellite Data
For the last seven years, PlanetScope satellites have started near-daily imaging of parts of the Earth’s surface, making high-density multitemporal, multispectral, 3-m pixel imagery accessible to researchers. Multitemporal satellite data enables landscape archaeologists to examine changes in environmental conditions at time scales ranging from daily to decadal. This kind of temporal resolution can accentuate landscape features on the ground by de…
Archaeology, ethnography, and geosciences reveal central role of traditional lifeways in shaping Madagascar's dry forests
Many communities in southwestern Madagascar rely on a mix of foraging, fishing, farming, and herding, with cattle central to local cultures, rituals, and intergenerational wealth transfer. Today these livelihoods are critically threatened by the intensifying effects of climate change and biodiversity loss. Improved understanding of ancient community-environment dynamics can help identify pathways to livelihood sustainability. Multidisciplinary ap…
Geophysics elucidate long-term socio-ecological dynamics of foraging, pastoralism, and mixed subsistence strategies on SW Madagascar
The environmental impacts of human societies are generally assumed to correlate with factors such as population size, whether they are industrialized, and the intensity of their landscape modifications (e.g., agriculture, urban development). As a result, small-scale communities with subsistence economies are often not the focus of long-term studies of environmental impact. However, comparing human-environment dynamics and their lasting ecological…
Evaluating the Archaeological Efficacy of Bathymetric LiDAR across Oceanographic Contexts: A Case Study from Apalachee Bay, Florida
This study presents preliminary results from recent bathymetric LiDAR-guided surveys of submerged archaeological landscapes in the Apalachee Bay off the coast of Florida. We show how bathymetric LiDAR can re-identify previously recorded archaeological sites and identify new cultural deposits at shallow depths and help aid SCUBA surveys of submerged environments. While most prior archaeological applications of bathymetric LiDAR have focused on shi…
Evidence of lithic blade technology in southwest Madagascar
This rapid communication describes a lithic blade that was recently recovered during excavations in the Velondriake Marine Protected Area in southwest Madagascar. This represents the only recorded archaeological lithic blade recovered from southwest Madagascar. The blade was recovered in situ at a depth of 1.66 m, a deposit dating to between 750 and 1200 BP at site G134, adjacent to the modern village of Antsaragnasoa. While similar in material c…
Evaluating Mask R‐CNN models to extract terracing across oceanic high islands: A case study from Sāmoa
Lidar datasets have been crucial for documenting the scale and nature of human ecosystem engineering and land use. Automated analysis methods, which have been rising in popularity and efficiency, allow for systematic evaluations of vast landscapes. Here, we use a Mask R‐CNN deep learning model to evaluate terracing—artificially flattened areas surrounded by steeper slopes—on islands in American Sāmoa. Mask R‐CNN is notable for its ability to simu…
Past, Present, and Future of Complex Systems Theory in Archaeology
Social networks as risk-mitigation strategies in south-west Madagascar
Palaeoenvironmental data indicate that the climate of south-western Madagascar has changed repeatedly over the past millennium. Combined with socio-political challenges such as warfare and slave raiding, communities continually had to mitigate against risk. Here, the authors apply social network analysis to pottery assemblages from sites on the Velondriake coast to identify intercommunity connectivity and changes over time. The results indicate b…
Theoretical Repositioning of Automated Remote Sensing Archaeology: Shifting from Features to Ephemeral Landscapes
Automated remote sensing has made substantial breakthroughs for archaeological investigation. Over the past 20 years, the reliability of these methods has vastly improved, and the total number of practitioners has been increasing. Nonetheless, much of the work conducted, to date, focuses almost exclusively on specific topographic features and monumental architecture, ignoring the potential of automation to readily assess more ephemeral components…
The aerial panopticon and the ethics of archaeological remote sensing in sacred cultural spaces
Remote sensing technology has become a standard tool for archaeological prospecting. Yet the ethical guidelines associated with the use of these technologies are not well established and are even less‐often discussed in published literature. With a nearly unobstructed view of large geographic spaces, aerial and spaceborne remote sensing technology creates an asymmetrical power dynamic between observers and the observed. Here, we explore the power…
Ethical challenges in the practice of remote sensing and geophysical archaeology
The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare. Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study
Deep learning reveals extent of Archaic Native American shell-ring building practices
In the mid-Holocene (5000 - 3000 cal B.P.), Native American groups constructed shell rings, a type of circular midden, in coastal areas of the American Southeast. These deposits provide important insights into Native American socioeconomic organization but are also quite rare: only about 50 such rings have been documented to date. Recent work using automated LiDAR analysis demonstrates that many more shell rings likely exist than are currently re…
Administrative reclassification and neighborhood governance in urbanizing China
Before the economic reforms, the Chinese state relied on mutually exclusive hierarchies within and between rural and urban governance at the subnational level to structure administration, organize populations, and exert political authority. Other than spatial restructuring and population transformation, urbanization in China also involves rural-to-urban administrative reclassification of territories. Drawing on a 2018 national survey conducted in…
Aerial and Spaceborne Remote Sensing in African Archaeology: A Review of Current Research and Potential Future Avenues
Assessing the Utility of Open-Access Bathymetric Data for Shipwreck Detection in the United States
Investigation of submerged cultural heritage is an important area of archeological focus. However, the expense of acquiring the necessary data to conduct studies of underwater landscapes is often prohibitive to many researchers. Within the United States, highly resolved bathymetric data are openly available from governmental agencies, and yet little to no marine archaeological exploration has occurred using this information. Here, we investigate …
The Integration of Lidar and Legacy Datasets Provides Improved Explanations for the Spatial Patterning of Shell Rings in the American Southeast
Archaeologists have struggled to combine remotely sensed datasets with preexisting information for landscape-level analyses. In the American Southeast, for example, analyses of lidar data using automated feature extraction algorithms have led to the identification of over 40 potential new pre-European-contact Native American shell ring deposits in Beaufort County, South Carolina. Such datasets are vital for understanding settlement distributions,…
Addressing the problem of disappearing cultural landscapes in archaeological research using multi-scalar survey
Climate change and anthropogenic activities are actively destroying the archaeological record. The dramatic disappearance of archaeological landscapes becomes particularly problematic when they are also unrecorded. Hidden from view and eroding, these disappearing landscapes likely hold answers to important anthropological questions. As such, disappearing landscapes present a major challenge for 21st century archaeology. Left unchecked, this pheno…
Satellite-based remote sensing rapidly reveals extensive record of Holocene coastal settlement on Madagascar
Creating Wealth and Poverty in Postsocialist China
Social Benefits: Explaining China's Changing Income Inequality Qin Gao and Carl Riskin Chapter 3 Market and Gender Pay Equity: Have Chinese Reforms Narrowed the Gap? Philip N. Cohen and Wang Feng Chapter 4 The Two Faces of Luxury: Gender and Generational Inequality in a Beijing Hotel Eileen Otis Chapter 5 The Changing Structure of Employment in Contemporary China Peter Evans and Sarah Staveteig POSTSOCIALIST POWER AND PROPERTY RELATIONS Chapter 6…
Defining what we study: The contribution of machine automation in archaeological research
Object‐based image analysis: A review of developments and future directions of automated feature detection in landscape archaeology
Object‐based image analysis (OBIA) is a method of assessing remote sensing data that uses morphometric and spectral parameters simultaneously to identify features in remote sensing imagery. Over the past 10–15 years, OBIA methods have been introduced to detect archaeological features. Improvements in accuracy have been attained by using a greater number of morphometric variables and multiple scales of analysis. This article highlights the develop…
Studying Human Responses to Environmental Change: Trends and Trajectories of Archaeological Research
Environmental archaeological enquiry has a long and vibrant history. Many of the same questions have persisted in archaeological dialogues over the past century. In particular, the effects of environmental change on demographic patterns, health, and societal stability are among the most pervasive questions being addressed by anthropological research. These studies have limitations, however. For example, evaluations of the complex relationships be…
Creating Wealth and Poverty in Postsocialist China
Social Benefits: Explaining China's Changing Income Inequality Qin Gao and Carl Riskin Chapter 3 Market and Gender Pay Equity: Have Chinese Reforms Narrowed the Gap? Philip N. Cohen and Wang Feng Chapter 4 The Two Faces of Luxury: Gender and Generational Inequality in a Beijing Hotel Eileen Otis Chapter 5 The Changing Structure of Employment in Contemporary China Peter Evans and Sarah Staveteig POSTSOCIALIST POWER AND PROPERTY RELATIONS Chapter 6…
Privatization of Marriage in Post-Socialist China
Over the past three decades, a distinctly post-socialist form of marriage with high rates of divorce as well as rising rates of marriage and remarriage has emerged as the result of a “triple turn” by the party-state in regard to the institution of marriage: a “turn toward” marriage as a voluntary contract, a “turn away” from close surveillance of sexual relationships, and a “turn away” from protection of communal property. The one-child policy ru…
Life satisfaction in urbanizing China: The effect of city size and pathways to urban residency
Automated mound detection using lidar and object-based image analysis in Beaufort County, South Carolina
The study of precontact anthropogenic mounded features—earthen mounds, shell heaps, and shell rings—in the American Southeast is stymied by the spotty distribution of systematic surveys across the region. Many extant, yet unidentified, archaeological mound features continue to evade detection due to the heavily forested canopies that occupy large areas of the region, making pedestrian surveys difficult and preventing aerial observation. Object-ba…
Deep learning reveals extent of Archaic Native American shell-ring building practices
In the mid-Holocene (5000 - 3000 cal B.P.), Native American groups constructed shell rings, a type of circular midden, in coastal areas of the American Southeast. These deposits provide important insights into Native American socioeconomic organization but are also quite rare: only about 50 such rings have been documented to date. Recent work using automated LiDAR analysis demonstrates that many more shell rings likely exist than are currently re…
Defining what we study: The contribution of machine automation in archaeological research
Satellite-based remote sensing rapidly reveals extensive record of Holocene coastal settlement on Madagascar
Social Class Transformation in Urban China: Training, Hiring, and Promoting Urban Professionals and Managers after 1949
The Chinese Communist Party's (CCP's) structural transformation of urban society in the first years of the People's Republic is well documented and not often subject to debate. As early as 1953, state enterprises were the primary employers, and industry dominated commerce. Three years later, private business had been effectively eliminated, and entrepreneurs and independent professionals had disappeared as legitimate economic actors (see Table 1 …
The aerial panopticon and the ethics of archaeological remote sensing in sacred cultural spaces
Remote sensing technology has become a standard tool for archaeological prospecting. Yet the ethical guidelines associated with the use of these technologies are not well established and are even less‐often discussed in published literature. With a nearly unobstructed view of large geographic spaces, aerial and spaceborne remote sensing technology creates an asymmetrical power dynamic between observers and the observed. Here, we explore the power…
Reinstating the Family: Intergenerational Influence on Assortative Mating in China
Prevailing research on assortative mating marginalizes the agency of third parties. Yet, in China, an intergenerational perspective may be useful because family members have participated in spouse selection to maintain homogamy. Using Fudan Yangtze River Delta Social Transformation Survey, we found 20 percent of young adults found their spouse through family introduction. Education reduces, while family resources increase, young people’s reliance…
Demographic Challenges for a Rising China
Looking into the near future, China faces immense demographic challenges. Prolonged sub-replacement fertility has created irreversible conditions for rapid aging of the population, and massive migration to cities has left many villages populated by elderly farmers with no adult children to support them. Soaring divorce rates and high levels of residential dislocation have eroded family stability. To a large extent, government policies created to …
Property in Transition: Conflicts over Ownership in Post-Socialist Shanghai
Disaggregating property rights into abstract bundles of rights over the use, control, and alienation of property facilitates the systematic comparison of property regimes across time and space. However, because these analytic distinctions ignore the criteria by which individuals choose among competing claims of ownership, they cannot capture the moral reasoning that ultimately institutionalizes a property regime. Using focus group debates over co…
Ethical challenges in the practice of remote sensing and geophysical archaeology
The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare. Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study
Financial security of urban retirees
Studying Human Responses to Environmental Change: Trends and Trajectories of Archaeological Research
Environmental archaeological enquiry has a long and vibrant history. Many of the same questions have persisted in archaeological dialogues over the past century. In particular, the effects of environmental change on demographic patterns, health, and societal stability are among the most pervasive questions being addressed by anthropological research. These studies have limitations, however. For example, evaluations of the complex relationships be…
Administrative reclassification and neighborhood governance in urbanizing China
Before the economic reforms, the Chinese state relied on mutually exclusive hierarchies within and between rural and urban governance at the subnational level to structure administration, organize populations, and exert political authority. Other than spatial restructuring and population transformation, urbanization in China also involves rural-to-urban administrative reclassification of territories. Drawing on a 2018 national survey conducted in…
Past, Present, and Future of Complex Systems Theory in Archaeology
Assessing the Utility of Open-Access Bathymetric Data for Shipwreck Detection in the United States
Investigation of submerged cultural heritage is an important area of archeological focus. However, the expense of acquiring the necessary data to conduct studies of underwater landscapes is often prohibitive to many researchers. Within the United States, highly resolved bathymetric data are openly available from governmental agencies, and yet little to no marine archaeological exploration has occurred using this information. Here, we investigate …
Addressing the problem of disappearing cultural landscapes in archaeological research using multi-scalar survey
Climate change and anthropogenic activities are actively destroying the archaeological record. The dramatic disappearance of archaeological landscapes becomes particularly problematic when they are also unrecorded. Hidden from view and eroding, these disappearing landscapes likely hold answers to important anthropological questions. As such, disappearing landscapes present a major challenge for 21st century archaeology. Left unchecked, this pheno…
A comparison of automated object extraction methods for mound and shell-ring identification in coastal South Carolina
Africa-wide diversification of livelihood strategies: Isotopic insights into Holocene human adaptations to climate change
Bathymetric LiDAR and Semi‐Automated Feature Extraction Assist Underwater Archaeological Surveys
Critical data concerning key developments in global human history now lie submerged on continental shelves where investigations confront significant challenges. Whereas underwater excavations and surveys are expensive and weather dependent and require specialized training and equipment, remote sensing methods can improve chances for success offshore. A refinement in one method, a semi‐automated analysis protocol that can help to identify Pleistoc…
Social networks as risk-mitigation strategies in south-west Madagascar
Palaeoenvironmental data indicate that the climate of south-western Madagascar has changed repeatedly over the past millennium. Combined with socio-political challenges such as warfare and slave raiding, communities continually had to mitigate against risk. Here, the authors apply social network analysis to pottery assemblages from sites on the Velondriake coast to identify intercommunity connectivity and changes over time. The results indicate b…
The Integration of Lidar and Legacy Datasets Provides Improved Explanations for the Spatial Patterning of Shell Rings in the American Southeast
Archaeologists have struggled to combine remotely sensed datasets with preexisting information for landscape-level analyses. In the American Southeast, for example, analyses of lidar data using automated feature extraction algorithms have led to the identification of over 40 potential new pre-European-contact Native American shell ring deposits in Beaufort County, South Carolina. Such datasets are vital for understanding settlement distributions,…
Archaeology in the Fourth Dimension: Studying Landscapes with Multitemporal PlanetScope Satellite Data
For the last seven years, PlanetScope satellites have started near-daily imaging of parts of the Earth’s surface, making high-density multitemporal, multispectral, 3-m pixel imagery accessible to researchers. Multitemporal satellite data enables landscape archaeologists to examine changes in environmental conditions at time scales ranging from daily to decadal. This kind of temporal resolution can accentuate landscape features on the ground by de…
The Cultural Revolution in the Provinces
State and Family in Singapore: Restructuring an Industrial Society
Financial security of urban retirees
Community in Post-Mao China
Urban Spaces in Contemporary China
Consumer Revolution in Urban China
China's Consumer Revolution
When within less than a decade millions of people gained access to advanced modes of communication, new vocabularies of social discourse, and novel forms of leisure through newly commercialized outlets, it does not seem an exaggeration to claim that a revolution in consumption had occurred
Social Class Transformation in Urban China: Training, Hiring, and Promoting Urban Professionals and Managers after 1949
The Chinese Communist Party's (CCP's) structural transformation of urban society in the first years of the People's Republic is well documented and not often subject to debate. As early as 1953, state enterprises were the primary employers, and industry dominated commerce. Three years later, private business had been effectively eliminated, and entrepreneurs and independent professionals had disappeared as legitimate economic actors (see Table 1 …
The Consumer Revolution in Urban China
Tracking restoration in natural and urban field settings
Property in Transition: Conflicts over Ownership in Post-Socialist Shanghai
Disaggregating property rights into abstract bundles of rights over the use, control, and alienation of property facilitates the systematic comparison of property regimes across time and space. However, because these analytic distinctions ignore the criteria by which individuals choose among competing claims of ownership, they cannot capture the moral reasoning that ultimately institutionalizes a property regime. Using focus group debates over co…
Wives, Husbands, and Lovers: Marriage and Sexuality in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Urban China
What is the state of intimate romantic relationships and marriage in urban China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan? Since the 1980's, the character of intimate life in these urban settings has changed dramatically. While many speculate about the 21st century as Asia's century, this book turns to the more intimate territory of sexuality and marriage—and observes the unprecedented changes in the law and popular expectations for romantic bonds and the creation…
Demographic Challenges for a Rising China
Looking into the near future, China faces immense demographic challenges. Prolonged sub-replacement fertility has created irreversible conditions for rapid aging of the population, and massive migration to cities has left many villages populated by elderly farmers with no adult children to support them. Soaring divorce rates and high levels of residential dislocation have eroded family stability. To a large extent, government policies created to …
Privatization of Marriage in Post-Socialist China
Over the past three decades, a distinctly post-socialist form of marriage with high rates of divorce as well as rising rates of marriage and remarriage has emerged as the result of a “triple turn” by the party-state in regard to the institution of marriage: a “turn toward” marriage as a voluntary contract, a “turn away” from close surveillance of sexual relationships, and a “turn away” from protection of communal property. The one-child policy ru…
Life satisfaction in urbanizing China: The effect of city size and pathways to urban residency
The Power of Ideology: Religion and Environmental Consciousness in Prehistoric Societies
People are defined by the environments in which they live. This article seeks to explain how environmentally-based ideologies help lead to the development of ecologically sustainable innovations. If the importance of nature is a core ideology of a society, measures will likely be taken to ensure sustainable usage of environmental resources. In times of short-term environmental instability, religious beliefs become strengthened due to successful r…
A comparison of automated object extraction methods for mound and shell-ring identification in coastal South Carolina
Automated mound detection using lidar and object-based image analysis in Beaufort County, South Carolina
The study of precontact anthropogenic mounded features—earthen mounds, shell heaps, and shell rings—in the American Southeast is stymied by the spotty distribution of systematic surveys across the region. Many extant, yet unidentified, archaeological mound features continue to evade detection due to the heavily forested canopies that occupy large areas of the region, making pedestrian surveys difficult and preventing aerial observation. Object-ba…
Object‐based image analysis: A review of developments and future directions of automated feature detection in landscape archaeology
Object‐based image analysis (OBIA) is a method of assessing remote sensing data that uses morphometric and spectral parameters simultaneously to identify features in remote sensing imagery. Over the past 10–15 years, OBIA methods have been introduced to detect archaeological features. Improvements in accuracy have been attained by using a greater number of morphometric variables and multiple scales of analysis. This article highlights the develop…
Studying Human Responses to Environmental Change: Trends and Trajectories of Archaeological Research
Environmental archaeological enquiry has a long and vibrant history. Many of the same questions have persisted in archaeological dialogues over the past century. In particular, the effects of environmental change on demographic patterns, health, and societal stability are among the most pervasive questions being addressed by anthropological research. These studies have limitations, however. For example, evaluations of the complex relationships be…
Reinstating the Family: Intergenerational Influence on Assortative Mating in China
Prevailing research on assortative mating marginalizes the agency of third parties. Yet, in China, an intergenerational perspective may be useful because family members have participated in spouse selection to maintain homogamy. Using Fudan Yangtze River Delta Social Transformation Survey, we found 20 percent of young adults found their spouse through family introduction. Education reduces, while family resources increase, young people’s reliance…
Aerial and Spaceborne Remote Sensing in African Archaeology: A Review of Current Research and Potential Future Avenues
Assessing the Utility of Open-Access Bathymetric Data for Shipwreck Detection in the United States
Investigation of submerged cultural heritage is an important area of archeological focus. However, the expense of acquiring the necessary data to conduct studies of underwater landscapes is often prohibitive to many researchers. Within the United States, highly resolved bathymetric data are openly available from governmental agencies, and yet little to no marine archaeological exploration has occurred using this information. Here, we investigate …
The Integration of Lidar and Legacy Datasets Provides Improved Explanations for the Spatial Patterning of Shell Rings in the American Southeast
Archaeologists have struggled to combine remotely sensed datasets with preexisting information for landscape-level analyses. In the American Southeast, for example, analyses of lidar data using automated feature extraction algorithms have led to the identification of over 40 potential new pre-European-contact Native American shell ring deposits in Beaufort County, South Carolina. Such datasets are vital for understanding settlement distributions,…
Addressing the problem of disappearing cultural landscapes in archaeological research using multi-scalar survey
Climate change and anthropogenic activities are actively destroying the archaeological record. The dramatic disappearance of archaeological landscapes becomes particularly problematic when they are also unrecorded. Hidden from view and eroding, these disappearing landscapes likely hold answers to important anthropological questions. As such, disappearing landscapes present a major challenge for 21st century archaeology. Left unchecked, this pheno…
Geography (30 works) · Archaeology (26 works) · Archaeological Research and Protection (18 works) · Political science (15 works) · Computer Science (14 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (13 works) · China (13 works) · Geology (13 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Economics (12 works)