The Valle de la Plata Settlement Dataset complements the book Prehispanic Chiefdoms in the Valle de la Plata, Volume 5: Regional Settlement Patterns edited by Robert D. Drennan (available from the University of Pittsburgh Center for Comparative Archaeology). It consists of the detailed data from the regional survey carried out in the Valle de la Plata in the Andes of southern Colombia and discussed in full in the printed volume, whose contents are as follows:

• Chapter 1: Introduction (by Robert D. Drennan)
• Chapter 2: Field Methods and the Database (by Robert D. Drennan)
• Chapter 3: Settlement Patterns in the Western Survey Zone
• 3.1 General Environmental Characteristics and Settlement (by Robert D. Drennan, Luis Gonzalo Jaramillo E., Carlos A. Sánchez, María Angela Ramírez, and Elizabeth Ramos R.)
• 3.2 Demographic Patterns (by Robert D. Drennan and Ana María Boada Rivas)
• 3.3 Soilscapes, Agricultural Productivity, and Modern Land Use (by Pedro José Botero, Robert D. Drennan, Jonás C. León P., Julio César Moreno, and Néstor Helman Alarcón Pereira)
• 3.4 Distributional Patterns: Resources, Polities, and Communities (by Robert D. Drennan, Dale W. Quattrin, and Christian E. Peterson)
• Chapter 4: Settlement Patterns in the Eastern Survey Zone
• 4.1 Environment and Agricultural Productivity (by Pedro José Botero, Robert D. Drennan, Jonás C. León P., Julio César Moreno, and Néstor Helman Alarcón Pereira)
• 4.2 Survey, Population, and Distributional Patterns (by Robert D. Drennan, Veronica M. Kennedy, and Michael J. Coletti)
• Chapter 5: Settlement Patterns in the Central Survey Zone
• 5.1 Environment and Agricultural Productivity (by Pedro José Botero, Robert D. Drennan, Jonás C. León P., Julio César Moreno, and Néstor Helman Alarcón Pereira)
• 5.2 Survey, Population, and Distributional Patterns (by Robert D. Drennan, Camilo Díaz Pardo, and Augusto Ramírez)
• Chapter 6: Conclusion (by Robert D. Drennan)

The Valle de la Plata Regional Settlement Dataset was supported by the National Science Foundation (Award No. BNS-8518290), the National Endowment for the Humanities (Award No. RO-21152-86), and the Fundación de Investigaciones Arqueológicas Nacionales del Banco de la República de Colombia.

Drennan, Robert D., editor (2006a) Prehispanic Chiefdoms in the Valle de la Plata, Volume 5: Regional Settlement Patterns. University of Pittsburgh Memoirs in Latin American Archaeology, No. 16.

Drennan, Robert D. (2006b) Valle de la Plata Settlement Dataset. Comparative Archaeology Database, University of Pittsburgh. URL: <http://www.cadb.pitt.edu>.

Questions or comments about this dataset or the Comparative Archaeology Database can be directed to cadb@pitt.edu via email.

CONTENTS OF THE DATASET

This dataset contains three kinds of things: numeric data for individual collection lots in the survey, along with other ancillary datasets; a GIS dataset of maps providing locations of individual collection lots, distributions of settlement in different periods, and environmental variables as GIS datasets; and color images of illustrations that appear in black-and-white in the printed volume.

Numeric Data

Numeric data are provided in two file formats. Comma-delimited text files should be easy to import into spreadsheet, database, and statistical programs for manipulation and analysis. Excel spreadsheets are easier to browse, and can also be imported into many programs. The two numeric data files are as follows:

GIS Dataset

Maps are included as a detailed GIS dataset, in several formats. Some maps are provided as AutoCAD (Release 12) .DXF files which can be read by many CAD and GIS programs. Others are provided as GIS layers in two formats: Idrisi (Version 14--Kilimanjaro) raster image files and GEOTIFF raster files, which can be imported into many GIS programs. The GIS datasets were created and analyzed with GRASS and Idrisi, and the GEOTIFF files were created with Idrisi. The formats of the maps provided in this section were not chosen for simple viewing, but rather for analysis. (The data values in many of the GEOTIFF files, for example, mean that, without contrast adjustments, they may look all black when viewed with a program such as Photoshop.) Color images of many of the maps that appear as black-and-white illustrations in the printed volume are available as .JPG files below under color images.

The coordinate system of the maps is derived from the UTM-based system utilized on the topographic maps of the Instituto Geográfico Agustín Codazzi in Bogotá that were current at the time the survey was carried out. The units are expressed in kilometers in a planar Cartesian system. For IGAC coordinates whose range was over 1,000 km, initial digits were dropped for convenience (leaving, for example, 736 km instead of 1,736 km). The GIS image files are at a resolution of 10 m. The western survey zone GIS files cover an area of 31 km east-west and 21 km north-south (3100 columns by 2100 rows of cells). The central zone GIS files cover an area of 11 km east-west and 14 km north-south (1100 columns by 1400 rows of cells). And the eastern survey zone GIS file cover an area of 22 km east-west by 17 km north-south (2200 columns by 1700 rows of cells).

The GIS dataset includes the following:

Color Images

Photographs, maps, and other figures in which color is useful that could only be presented in black-and-white in the printed volume are available here as color .JPG image files:

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