Document Type

Thesis

Date of Degree Completion

Spring 2026

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Cultural and Environmental Resource Management

Committee Chair

Sterling Quinn

Second Committee Member

Steven Hackenberger

Third Committee Member

Patrick McCutcheon

Abstract

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have seen increased use in ethnographic and archaeological studies over the last several decades. Though revolutionary in their ability to predict and document sites of archaeological or cultural significance, they remain limited in their capacity to communicate the full extent of potential values certain geographies offer to both cultural specialists and their communities. These limitations are amplified when attempting to represent how the landscape is experienced within GIS’s statistical framework. In this manuscript I present different approaches to GIS modeling that attempt to identify some of the advantages Frenchman Coulee could have offered to the Indigenous people who occupied the Columbia Basin of present-day Washington State before settlers arrived from Europe. These case studies were informed by published ethnography and conversations with cultural resource specialists and include; historic terrain reconstruction, comparing localized and regional cumulative viewshed models, wind modeling, identifying potentially strategic hunting locations, and motive-inspired least-cost-path (LCP) modeling. These case studies provide insight into ways ethnography can be represented in GIS, but I further offer a critique of the ways those methods can be viewed as problematic and incomplete.

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