Scythian Landscape - Analysis

This week we began our analysis of the landscape around the Scythian mounds at Tuekta.  This consisted primarily of running reclassification operations on various landscape attributes.  The first map (top left) is a simple contour map of the study area.  This gives us a general idea of the elevation where the mounds are found.  The second map (top right) is a reclassification of the slope.  Using this map, we can determine (not at this scale) that the mound areas generally have a slope in the range of 0 - 9.3° (in dark green). This will provide a good guide in the future on areas that might have undiscovered mounds.  The next map (middle left) is a reclassification of the elevation.  From this map, we can determine area that are in a similar elevation band as the known mounds.  The middle right map shows reclassified aspect.  This map shows the directional exposure of the area.  The areas that have a mostly southern exposure (towards sunlight) are highlighted in light blue.  Finally, the bottom image shows my guesses at mounds (some obvious, others not so much) based on an aerial view of the Tuekta area.  These are areas that we may want to explore further.