Table 3 Present-day context of the mounds identified in the SoI historical maps

From: Reconstructing long-term settlement histories on complex alluvial floodplains by integrating historical map analysis and remote-sensing: an archaeological analysis of the landscape of the Indus River Basin

Mound-features

Total

Mounds

Modern buildings

Modern buildings and mounds

Agricultural fields

Identified in PAS

123

23% (n29)

26% (n33)

42% (n52)

7% (n9)

Random sample > 2Ā ha

100

10%

30%

41%

19%

Random sample < 2Ā ha

100

5%

42%

11%

42%

  1. We have examined all mounds that could be related to sites reported in the PAS (see Table 2). From the rest, a random sample query has been applied to select 100 features across the AOI. A second random sample query has been done on the smaller ā€œmound featuresā€, which provide interesting results to understand the specific problems of the small features represented in the SoI historical maps: in that case almost 90% are ā€œnot visibleā€ Today, which confirms the low probability to be mounds, specially in the present landscape, but maybe also in the past. However, as happened in Haryana, still a small proportion correspond to mounds (16% here). That evidences that is a dataset not to be entirely dismissed, specially when working at micro-regional level