ABSTRACT
The impact of a new technology on methodology and theoretical approaches in archaeology can be profound. If archaeological GIS applications are seen to be simply the vehicles for individuals who seek merely to use archaeological data to demonstrate the merits of various GIS hardware or software, the technology will have a limited impact. The authors suggest that these limitations are compounded by the repeated use of data types which most easily fit the prevalent GIS data model and that too little consideration is paid to whether these data sets allow valid descriptions of past societies or even of settlement systems. They begin to diverge from van Leusen, however, when he begins to discuss cultural resource management models. If such an observation is correct, it becomes pertinent to study the GIS data structure as frequently demonstrated in many archaeological GIS applications.
