https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0269-075X
Peer Review History
| Original SubmissionMarch 4, 2021 |
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PONE-D-21-07238 Creating the funerary landscape of Eastern Sudan PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Costanzo, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Both reviewers have a number of small comments and suggestions, which I think will improve the paper. I would particularly encourage some editing to unify the styles used (possibly by different co-authors) in different sections, and to distinguish descriptions of workflow from results, as pointed out by Reviewer 1. I also think it would be good to clarify the use of 'galaxy-like' in describing both a statistical method borrowed from cosmology *and*, at the same time some behavioral implication of the clustering of funerary structures (as pointed out by Reviewer 2). Reviewer 2 also recommends some recently published literature to cite. Please submit your revised manuscript by Jun 19 2021 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:
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The following resources for replacing copyrighted map figures may be helpful: USGS National Map Viewer (public domain): http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/ The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth (public domain): http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/sseop/clickmap/ Maps at the CIA (public domain): https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html and https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/cia-maps-publications/index.html NASA Earth Observatory (public domain): http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/ Landsat: http://landsat.visibleearth.nasa.gov/ USGS EROS (Earth Resources Observatory and Science (EROS) Center) (public domain): http://eros.usgs.gov/# Natural Earth (public domain): http://www.naturalearthdata.com/ [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. 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(Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: Review of: PONE-D-21-07238, entitled "Creating the funerary landscape of Eastern Sudan". Stefano Costanzo and colleagues provide an innovative approach to analyze, visualize, and interpret the archaeological remains of tumuli and tombs in eastern Sudan. The research approach of the authors includes point pattern analysis and the integration of an underlying explanatory covariate using quantitative statistics (R software) and spatial modelling (GIS). The applied methods provide a highly useful tool to model point patterns and to understand the role of environmental explanatory parameters like resource availability, terrain roughness, or other variables. In the paper, the authors aim at tracing the spatial patterns of (visible) burial places as a function of visibility and resource availability/accessibility, which is basically a pragmatic reaction to the distribution of the available raw material in the region. Furthermore, they integrate basic remote sensing techniques, mostly based on satellite imagery to identify and interpret visible archaeological remains. In general, this article provides a very good overview of the methodical workflow of point pattern analysis and furthermore integrates a new parameter to spatial modelling and statistical methods in landscape archaeology (Neyman-Scott Cluster Process), which allows for the detection of ‘nested clustered’ spatial patterns within larger clusters. That can be considered an interesting and innovative approach to quantitative methods in general and particularly the evaluation of large archaeological datasets. I would also like to particularly emphasize the author’s attempt to not just simply map and plot but to include also socio-cultural behavior, perception, and group identity performance into the modelling outlook of their research. Consequently, this paper is an informative contribution to archaeological research in general and I am looking forward to seeing this article published. However, I would like to discuss some minor points, mostly concerning the structure of the paper (for individual comments, please see below). The paper clearly is a methodical paper, which offers the reader an introduction into current approaches in spatial statistics and modelling techniques (see also the previous research of the authors). For this reason, the actual structure of the paper follows a short introduction into the archaeological and environmental settings, followed by a Material and Methods section and a Workflow and Results paragraph. The introduction would benefit from some reconsiderations about the main goal of the paper. Correct me if I am wrong, but it looks a bit like the archaeological settings are used as canvas to apply in-depth statistical methods. I also have the feeling that some parts of the introduction and some parts of section 2 (mostly archaeology) were written by a different author compared to the rest of the paper (see also stylistic and spelling errors, -> comments below). The environmental section is very well written and provides a sufficient overview of the study area’s properties. The following section 3 (Material and Methods) provides a short overview of the data acquisition and some outlines of point pattern analysis (PPA). This section is followed by paragraph 4, which describes the workflow and also the results of the analysis. That s a tricky thing and could meet with opposition regarding the structure of the paper. From my individual point of view, I am totally convinced that it is not easy to distinguish the methodical workflow from the results because every single step in the analysis provides new potential results, which then require adjusted methods. The workflow itself can be considered an important part of the results and thus cannot function as a stand-alone section – it would give the impression of a completely detached section and decrease the readability of the paper (or any other paper). On the other side, the authors do integrate a Material and Methods paragraph, which (methodically) renders the results section a mere results section. If the authors can find a smooth way to overcome these structural issues, the overall outlook of the paper would be even more convincing. General comments (please consider that I am not a native speaker) Abstract: 41: behavior 46: to decipher 51: maybe introduce cairns as funerary elements earlier to a broader readership of PLOS One 52: which is still embedded. Do you mean today? 1 Introduction: 57: extremely? 60: intricate? Maybe complex or nested? 61: missing reference 62: vegetation cover? 68: usually instead of oftentimes? 67-70: consider rewording this section 73: infrastructure 73: subject to, prone to, vulnerable? 74: as much as more eminent? Like many other? 75: One example is the hilly Kassala region and Eritrean borderland in Eastern Sudan, where… 76: copius scatters? Maybe scattered patterns? 78: that such monuments occur in forms belonging… please consider rewording this phrase 80: missing word. And classified? Also 80: around the shared characteristic of being round… that sounds odd. Consider rewording. 81: are of instead of have? 82: Another 85: with early authors you mean: Previously, or previous authors, or previous results.. 85: please reconsider the wording of ‘tribes’, which has a negative connotation. Maybe ‘groups’ is more elegant or just “Beja people”. 89: , which led to the.. 95: what is a traditional GIS approach? 2 Geography and Archaeology The first part is generally well written and provides a very good overview of the study area! 109: are located, and delete respectively 116: erosive power? What means alternance? 117: extant? You mean the modern? I mean, you are using modern elevation data so I assume modern would be the right word. 120: Archaeological records from the… suggest… 122: particularly 122: Mesolithic versus Mesolithic and Palaeolithic, be concise in the paper. 124: refer to the original references here! 125: what do you mean with relatively sedentary? Reconsider this methodologically.. ‘relatively’ is not a very precise expression in scientific work.. 136: in line 80 you state that they share round characteristics! This is contradictory to what you say here… 140: According to previous results (citation…) 141: they not there 142: Two-storey domed 142-144: maybe use century and not secolo or sec. maybe use 16th century AD -> check the journal guidelines for this. 144-145: Their spatial extent stretches from… to or: They stretch from… to 145: in the north 144-147: this is grammatically wrong and hard to understand. Please rephrase. 151: satellite views is certainly not correct. Imagery or images 3 Material and Methods This is very well written and summarizes nicely current approaches in spatial analyses and quantitative methods. It shows that the author(s) (maybe the work was split because this paragraph shows differences in linguistic style) are very familiar with the statistic approaches presented in this paper (and in general). For a broader readership and to facilitate the reproducibility of the work, it would be helpful to add some more references to this part. 4 Workflow and results In this paragraph, the authors are mixing up methodical approaches and subsequent results. I know, it is – particularly when applying a statistical approach – not easy to distinguish into a strictly methodical part and a results/discussion section because the workflow itself can be considered a result per se. In this case, paragraph 4 is a methodical outline of the paper and represents the core of the research. The paper thus turns into a completely methodical and methodological article – which is a good thing! – but this can also be more explicitly highlighted in the abstract and the introduction. 216: A Kernel Density… 216-219: please add references 242/258/9: igneous vs Igneous and metamorphic. Be concise. 357 add model before hybrid 366: site’s ? the site’s distribution? Better: site distribution patterns? 369 and others: L-function, K-function instead of L function. Please be concise 379: add the before L-function 378-379: why do you think so? Spatial interaction only at small scale? If you just state this without adding a discussion, please cite. However, I am not totally sure that this is actually true…. I know that in quantitative methods, a radius or sigma needs to be determined, which is a totally subjective perspective but there are other many authors applying different radii in their research. This is also dependent on terrain permeability and accessibility and hence needs to be reconsidered – at least with a (small) literature review… 391: its instead of their 437: to reveal. Delete again, delete indeed, exists, resulting, weathering processes. Consider also rewording this whole sentence.. maybe split it in two? 490: again: tribes. Please use groups Figures: Fig 1: Consider changing the size and the colors of the archaeological features in the map to increase readability (although I am aware that the manuscript will be published online). Fig. 3: please add north arrow and a grid Reviewer #2: The results of the study are relevant observations about the funeraryscape of Eastern Sudan and of the qubbas' spatial distribution. This is an important paper with fresh material and new approaches regarding the assessment of burialscapes in Sudan and elsewhere, highlighting the potential of advanced spatial statistics. This important paper should clearly be published; I suggest that some minor points are reconsidered and maybe explained in more detail. Here are some brief comments on terms and content: Line 94 and passim: Could you elaborate why „monumental funerary landscape of Eastern Sudan“ is an appropriate term? Why and how are these tombs monumental? What is your reference point here, thinking of other monumental stone monuments etc. Line 100: Maybe you want to refer for the „formation of funerary landscaped in arid regions“ to recent work in the Fourth Cataract or in the Bayuda? See below Line 416: Since you employed the NSC models, I completely understand that it was tempting to use „galaxy-like clusters“ for your tomb settings – but could you maybe explain what „galaxy-like“ really means here? The same holds true for line 511 “cosmogony” – as much as I like this, is it really an appropriate term for the burialscape of Eastern Sudan? If so, why? Line 417: Could you elaborate what the precise socio-cultural choices were? In what respect are they “precise”? See also your conclusion where a number of questions are still left open and will only be answered by fieldwork. Line 498ff: Are there any means to explain the comparably very low number of tumuli compared to qubbas? How those this difference in quantities affect or not affect your results and proposed narrative of a continuous use/occupation? Some more Sudan-specific references for GIS and geoarchaeological projects could be useful, thus potential/optional additions to references 2,3 and 4,5: Beuger, André 2018. The Geoarchaeology Web Service 2.0: open archaeological geodata of the Bayuda. In Lohwasser, Angelika, Tim Karberg, and Johannes Auenmüller (eds), Bayuda studies: proceedings of the first international conference on the archaeology of the Bayuda Desert in Sudan, 141-156. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Abdalla Jadain, Modather 2018. An archaeological survey north of the 6th Cataract: GIS study of Sabaloka East. Der Antike Sudan. Mitteilungen der Sudanarchäologischen Gesellschaft zu Berlin 29, 39-57. For note 5, a recent monograph has appeared: Jiménez-Higueras, Ángeles 2020. The sacred landscape of Dra Abu el-Naga during the New Kingdom: people making landscape making people. Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 113. Leiden; Boston: Brill Note 6 is of course the seminal study of one of the authors, but maybe references to other areas of the Sudan could be made? For example, the Fourth Catarct region was labelled as "one continuous cemetery of buried civilisations” (Jackson 1926: 1 = Jackson, H. C. (1926): A trek in the Abu Hamed District, Sudan Notes and Records 9, No. 2, 1–35, see Budka 2006, in: MittSAG, Der Antike Sudan), and this statement was reassessed by modern surveys in the 2000s, see especially works by Welsby, Wolf, Paner and others. That other regions far from the Nile Valley remained unexplored until recently is correct, but maybe some examples other than the case study Eastern Sudan could be mentioned? E.g. recent work in Kordofan, where also remote sensing is essential, see Eger, Jana and Tim Karberg 2020. Nord-Kordofan im Satelitenbild: Vorbericht über die Forschungen des InterLINK-Projektes 2020. Der Antike Sudan. Mitteilungen der Sudanarchäologischen Gesellschaft zu Berlin 31, 87-98; or see the Bayuda Desert, where also geoarchaeological research was carried out, see Lohwasser, Angelika, Tim Karberg, and Johannes Auenmüller (eds), Bayuda studies: proceedings of the first international conference on the archaeology of the Bayuda Desert in Sudan, 2018. Domed tombs in another area of Sudan (Qerri and Sabaloka region) were recently discussed, maybe this is also of interest: Siddig Babiker Ahmed Daffallah 2015. The archaeological and ethnological reconnaissance of Qerri area. In Zach, Michael H. (ed.), The Kushite world: proceedings of the 11th international conference for Meroitic studies, Vienna, 1-4 September 2008, 405-414. Vienna: Verein der Förderer der Sudanforschung. ********** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: Yes: Michael Kempf Reviewer #2: Yes: Julia Budka [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.
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| Revision 1 |
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Creating the funerary landscape of Eastern Sudan PONE-D-21-07238R1 Dear Dr. Costanzo, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Radu Iovita Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Thank you for your hard work and earnest engagement with the reviewers' comments. I have only one final suggestion, regarding the use of the cosmogony metaphor: although it is much more clearly explained in this version, I think there is still a chance that the reader will think an archaeoastronomical analysis is being introduced at the very end of the paper and be confused. While inventing a new term for 'genesis of a funerary landscape' might make things even more confusing, perhaps something like mentioning explicitly that this is a metaphor or adding quotation marks around the word 'cosmogony' might convey your meaning sufficiently to remove any doubt. Reviewers' comments: |
| Formally Accepted |
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PONE-D-21-07238R1 Creating the funerary landscape of Eastern Sudan Dear Dr. Costanzo: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Radu Iovita Academic Editor PLOS ONE |
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