ZJ: Energetically optimal travel across terrain: visualizations and a new metric of geographic distance with archaeological applications

Figure 1. Terrain with path comparisons. The shortest path is shown in red while the energetically least cost path is shown in blue. This visualization shows how least cost paths often follow natural features of the landscape, avoiding unnecessary elevation gains. The elevation profiles of these two paths further illustrate this fact. See figure 2. The overall caloric saving for the least cost path is 21%. We present a visualization and computation tool for modeling the caloric cost of pedestrian travel across three dimensional terrains. This tool is being used in ongoing archaeological research that analyzes how costs of locomotion affect the spatial distribution of trails and artifacts across archaeological landscapes. Throughout human history, traveling by foot has been the most common form of transportation, and therefore analyses of pedestrian travel costs are important for understanding prehistoric patterns of resource acquisition, migration, trade, and political interaction. Traditionally, archaeologists have measure