Abstract
This paper addresses the benefits and challenges of modeling viewsheds with ASTER, SRTM, and AirSAR DEMs as they relate to human scale behaviors through a case study that examines the cultural and political significance of viewsheds for Precolumbian Maya rulers. The goal of this chapter is twofold: to illustrate the dramatic differences in currently available datasets for calculating viewsheds and to reflect on the implications indigenous concepts of vision and intervisibility hold for the reconstruction of ancient vistas. We conclude that movement through and vistas across the landscape participated in the construction of political power and authority in Classic period (c. 250–900 C.E.) Maya kingdoms, but that to achieve a reasonable quantitative model of these vistas the parameters of datasets available to most archaeologists are insufficient. Coarse-resolution DEMs used to model viewsheds vastly overstate the perceptible area, yet may conversely obscure areas that would otherwise be visible to a human observer. Visibility analyses have become a part of archaeological standard practice without due consideration of the cultural context of perception, or the resolution of data approximating human scales.