fieldMap {DIGSS}

Field Map

Description

Creates randomly placed ellipsoid sites in a rectangular field.

Usage

fieldMap(
  area,
  site.density,
  site.area,
  overlap = 0.5,
  plot = FALSE,
  areaprecision = 1000
)

Arguments

area

vector with horizontal and vertical size ⁠(hor,ver)⁠ of area surveyed in km.

site.density

number of sites/km². Can be one constant value or vector with two values ⁠(min, max)⁠ to create a range of densities between simulations.

site.area

either:

• One values with uniform area for all sites, or

• Vector with 4 values ⁠(min, max, mean, st dev)⁠, to create variable areas. areas in this case are normally distributed based on mean and stdev, but within the range of min and max.

overlap

proportion of overlap possible between sites: from (0 = no overlap allowed to 1 = sites can occupy same space)

plot

whether site ellipses should should be plotted.

areaprecision

value passed to areaEstimator. Defines precision of area calculation. Default value (1000), returns area within 0.1% of real area occupied by sites

Details

fieldMap() creates and plots randomly placed ellipses representing archaeological sites. The sites are created inside a user-defined rectangle, with random positions and random rotations. It allows also to control the percentage of overlap between sites.

Value

A list with three objects:

site.frame	A matrix with the properties of each site generated.
totalArea	The sum of areas of all site ellipses.
actualArea	The area occupied by the site ellipses taking into account their overlap)

Examples

#example of map with 8 sites or variable areas and partial overlap
field.example<-fieldMap(
                 area=c(1,1),
                 site.density=8,
                 site.area=c(50000,250000,150000,50000),
                 overlap=0.5,
                 plot=TRUE)