Joseph LewisPlease use the format "First name initials family name" as in "Marie S. Curie, Niels H. D. Bohr, Albert Einstein, John R. R. Tolkien, Donna T. Strickland"
<p>The movement of past peoples in the landscape has been studied extensively through the use of Least Cost Path (LCP) analysis. Although methodological issues of applying LCP analysis in Archaeology have frequently been discussed, the effect of vertical error in the DEM on LCP results has not been assessed. This research proposes the use of Monte Carlo simulation as a method for incorporating and propagating the effects of vertical error on LCP results. Random error fields representing the vertical error of the DEM are calculated and incorporated into the documented and reproducible LCP modelling process using the R package leastcostpath. By incorporating uncertainty into the LCP modelling process the accuracy of the LCP results can be understood probabilistically, with the likelihood of obtaining LCP accuracy results quantified. Furthermore, the effect of incorporating vertical error on the LCP results can be expressed through the use of probabilistic LCPs, allowing for the visual identification of areas that are probabilistically more likely, and conversely less likely, to have an LCP crossing a cell. The method of understanding LCPs results probabilistically is applied to a Roman road case study, finding that the accuracy of the LCP without incorporating vertical error from south-to-north is significantly different to the LCPs incorporating vertical error from south-to-north, and so is unlikely to occur due to chance alone. In contrast, the accuracy of the LCP without incorporating vertical error from north-to-south is not statistically different to LCPs incorporating vertical error. Lastly, the convergence of the mean-accuracy of the LCPs to the expected mean value is assessed, with recommendations on quantifying when convergence has occurred.</p>
