Examining claims of both prehistoric units of length and astronomical alignments at Megalithic sites in Europe, Heggie (1981) called for a statistical approach as the only way to test for significance.  Heggie considered his approach successful in ruling out some proposed measurements (they did not stand out against the statistical background), and demonstrated that others did indeed occur more than would be expected by random chance.  As a methodological approach spatial statistics can likewise help us sift through historical metrology claims in the Southeast, but still lack the power to establish any particular measurement as a unit of length actually used by prehistoric people.  For this we need more than just numbers, we need theory to bridge the gap between the numbers and our conclusions.  Even if a particular distance at a site occurs more than we would expect by chance alone, this would not in itself imply that it was a measure employed by the site's builders.                   

            Methodologically, future studies of cryptometrology in the Southeast should at the very least derive a statistical background for the measurement in question.  This is possible by taking into account the accumulated margin of error (from uncertainties about the exact location of the features, and the techniques used to derive these), the length of the unit(s) in question, and the number and clustering of potential targets.  The GIS techniques for deriving a statistical background presented above are surely not the only way to do this.  GIS is ideally suited to the question, though, and perhaps these techniques will inspire more sophisticated means of employing computer technologies in future studies.  Theoretically, any such studies should explicitly state exactly how and why certain points are chosen as targets, and why the chosen scale of analysis is deemed appropriate.  If a regular pattern of multiples or fractions of a particular distance are derived, such studies would still need to bridge the theoretical gap: why would this imply that the distance was a prehistoric unit of measurement, and not the result of some other factor of site patterning?