Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how archaeological spaces may be interrogated the mathematical transformations based upon principles of relativity in GIS. House floors from a probable longhouse were tested against longhouse expert models and archaeological round house examples to test for group membership.

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses a new application for old scientific principles based on a philosophical extension of Einstein's theory of relativity for Space-Time. With Einstein's physics, space and time are relative to the observer. Comparisons of house floors by relativity is achieved with a

mathematically based procedure that places a universal point of

observation within all structures based upon the centroid of the structure

itself. The data is transformed so that all structures can be placed upon

the same axial alignment and sampled for spatial correlations by Principal Components Analysis (PCA), relative to each structure's space. A further method Selective Centric Morphology (SCM) created for this study, places the point of observation as that relative for archaeological interpretations. In this study, the centre of the hearth acts as a centre of social activity and all space is transformed around this point of observation. This enables the ability to apply statistical tests that can be linked to spatial distributions, to compare known quantities against archaeological examples, and to directly make intersite comparisons beyond an anecdotal level. A test case, had archaeological distributions of objects related to food storage (pottery) and preparation (flint or unburnt bone) within house floors tested against models of longhouses and round/wheel houses to determine group membership. The study found that with transformations by both relativity and SCM, the

strongest correlations for the test case were with the longhouse

expert models and had a likely group membership with longhouses.