LiDAR (Other Keyword)
51-75 (105 Records)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Roads, Rivers, Rails and Trails (and more): The Archaeology of Linear Historic Properties" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. LiDAR at President Madison’s Virginia plantation has highlighted fields, ditches, and even plow furrows in areas that have been overgrown or wooded since abandonment in the 1840s. In these same areas, metal detector surveys have revealed work sites (barns, sheds, and fence areas) that...
Making the Most of Opportunities in 3D Visualization (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Making the Most of Opportunities in 3D Visualization" session, at the 2019 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. This forum, sponsored by the North American chapter of the Computer Applications and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology will comprise 3-minute presentations on the current use of 3D recordation and visualization techniques in historical archaeology. Presentations will address how the technology can move beyond producing a...
The Map Results of an Integrated UAV-Based Remote Sensing Platform in the Northern Yucatán (2018)
We report the results of testing a UAV-borne LiDAR and multispectral mapping system for archaeological mapping and modeling at the city of Mayapán, Mexico, located 40km south of modern Mérida. Mayapán was the largest Postclassic political capital and was one of the most densely nucleated of all Maya cities. The initial test is in an area adjacent to the south side of Mayapán’s monumental center. Previous research indicates the existence of a dense and complex system of residential and public...
Mapping the Mines, Part 1: Terrestrial LiDAR (2018)
Digital mapping is the trending technology for just about any archaeological fieldwork project. While many universities (and their impassioned students) have access to this new technology and can play with it ad nauseam, its introduction to CRM projects is not as forthcoming as some would like (including CRM practitioners and nascent drone companies). Like all emerging technologies, questions abound about which technology to use, effective application for the task at hand, and most importantly,...
Measures of Influence: Volumetric Assessment of Earthworks at Angel Mounds Using Drone-Based Lidar (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Angel Mounds State Historic Site, a Middle Mississippian fortified mound center along the Ohio River, is home to 11 man-made earthworks which make up the largest known archaeological site in Indiana. Angel’s occupation coincides with the regional changes in social organization that characterize Mississippian society. Many archaeologists have discussed mound...
Mitigation of the Alder Creek Mining District, Sacramento County, California (2017)
The mission of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ (Corps) Regulatory Program is to protect the Nation's aquatic resources while allowing reasonable development through fair and balanced permit decisions. The Corps consults with permit applicants and other consulting parties, in a collaborative effort, to develop appropriate mitigation measures when adverse effects to historic properties cannot be avoided. A new development was proposed that would adversely affect the National Register of Historic...
The Monumentality of the Preclassic Maya of the Mirador Basin, Guatemala (2018)
Archaeological investigations in 51 ancient sites within the geographical confines of the Mirador Basin of northern Guatemala have identified an extraordinary emphasis on monumentality in art and architecture dating well into the Middle and Late Preclassic periods of Maya occupation. The structure and format of this phenomenon is replicated in early complex societies in other parts of the world, and suggests a consistent human behavior of predictable characteristics. The analyses and forms of...
A Multi-Method Approach to Prospecting Stranded Paleo-Coastal Sites on Quadra Island, BC (2017)
Despite increasing support for the first peopling of North America via a coastal route, only a limited number of postglacial (Late Pleistocene–Early Holocene) archaeological sites have been identified on the Northwest Coast. This research aims to identify high potential locations for evidence of the Early Period archaeological record (pre-10,000 cal BP) on Quadra Island, BC. Quadra Island has experienced dramatic sea level regression over the past 14,000 years following the Last Glacial Maximum....
New Frontiers in Wetland Archaeology: Mapping Maya Agricultural Systems with Lidar (2017)
Lidar has exponentially increased our knowledge of ancient agricultural systems and land use, especially within the Maya world. This paper explores a new Lidar dataset for the Maya Lowlands in Northwestern Belize where archaeological and geoarchaeological teams have studied ditched and raised field systems for over 25 years. Through surveys and excavations, researchers in Northwestern Belize have shed light upon the importance of Maya wetland agriculture, but questions of spatial scale still...
Non-Invasive Documentation of Burial Mounds and Historic Earthworks from the Dakota Heartland: A Combined Approach Utilizing LiDAR and Shallow Subsurface Geophysical Methods. (2015)
Recent collaboration between archaeologists, geophysicists, tribes, and preservationists has improved documentation and preservation of precontact and historic earthworks using non-invasive methods. The availability of LiDAR data has revolutionized preservation efforts in the historic Dakota homeland by allowing us to identify and document cemeteries over large areas. At the site-specific scale, aerial LiDAR imaging is utilized in conjunction with subsurface geophysical imaging of earthworks...
The Panther Cave Digital Documentation and Visualization Project (2015)
Recent digital documentation efforts at Panther Cave (41VV83) have yielded a detailed record of current site conditions and provide a wealth of geospatial data pertinent to the prehistoric art preserved at the site. Three-dimensional laser scanning (LiDAR) and digital photogrammetry were integrated to record a highly accurate digital model of the rockshelter and its immediate environment. This documentation effort provides a robust corpus of data for use in the digital visualization, analysis,...
The Past, Present and Future of Archaeological Lidar: A View from Southeast Asia (2018)
In the last five years multiple campaigns of airborne laser scanning (or lidar) have been conducted by archaeologists over Angkor-period sites in Cambodia and neighbouring countries such as Thailand. Analysis of the lidar data is still underway and will continue for many years both in the lab and on the ground, but some key outcomes have now been published, and it is already clear that the advent of lidar represents an important milestone in the history of archaeological remote sensing. This...
Pattern recognition and automatic feature extraction in GIS. (2015)
Archaeological applications of geographic information systems and remote sensing technologies are becoming increasingly popular, especially in regard to site prospection and the geospatial analysis of cultural features. Utilizing aerial LiDAR and high-resolution satellite imagery of North Dakota, a training data set was used to define the boundaries and characteristics for certain morphological features of anthropogenic origin, which include mounds, earth lodge depressions, and fortification...
A post-glacial relative sea level curve and paleoshoreline archaeological survey for the Prince Rupert Harbour, BC, Canada (2017)
We present a relative sea level (RSL) curve for the Prince Rupert Harbour area for the last 15,000 years that is based on nearly 150 radiocarbon-dated data points. RSL dropped from at least 50 m asl to several m below current sea level immediately after deglaciation, before rising again to 4-6 m asl during the early Holocene. By 6000 years ago RSL had approached its current position, though there have been some late Holocene fluctuations. We used this RSL history in conjunction with...
Potential Method for Structure Alignment by the Ancient Maya (2018)
It is well established that the ancient Maya favored certain orientations for the buildings in their major urban centers. In the southern Maya lowlands, an orientation of 14° clockwise from the cardinal directions is particularly common. How did the ancient Maya find this orientation? What was their surveying technique? Lidar from many sites shows that this orientation was not limited to major constructions. The smallest residential structures and patio groups, structures spread throughout the...
Predictive Modeling of Paleoindian and Archaic Sites across Florida with GIS (2018)
Florida’s terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene archaeological sites form interesting settlement patterns when projected upon various geographic representations. Probably many unknown Paleoindian and Early Archaic sites still remain hidden and unstudied, as more than half of Florida’s landmass was inundated during these cultural periods. Due to constraints in visibility and access, the practical limits of traditional survey hinder progress in discovering additional sites around the state. With...
Preliminary Lidar-Based Analyses of Naachtun Settlement Patterns and Land Use (2017)
Located in the northern Petén, Guatemala, the Maya site of Naachtun has been investigated since 2010 by a pluri-disciplinary French-Guatemalan team. Some of its goals aim to reconstruct the political history of the site and its spatial evolution through time, and to understand the management of local resources and the impact of anthropic activities on the landscape. Archaeological and environmental excavations and studies have been carried out in the city center and surroundings areas while a...
Que Linda Vista! The first glance at LiDAR from Northwestern Belize. (2017)
In this paper, we offer a first look at the results of a LiDAR survey of northwestern Belize performed by the National Center for Aerial Laser Mapping in July, 2016. Three survey blocks were defined – one centered on the site of Xnoha near the Mexican border and another along the Rio Hondo corridor from near its headwaters to Chetumal Bay. The third and largest, covers the sites of La Milpa and Blue Creek as well as numerous ditched agricultural areas. At the time of submission, only the first...
The rapid generation and visualization of 3D timelapse reconstructions of the excavation at the Paleolithic site Arma Veirana in Italy. (2017)
Arma Veirana is a Middle/Upper Paleolithic cave site of the Maritime Alps of Liguria, Italy, which has the potential to offer insight into the interaction between Modern Humans and the Neandertals. Preliminary excavations have shown a continuous occupation between the Middle and Upper Paleolithic time periods, yet the complexity of the cave morphology and geology have made it difficult to isolate erosion as well as environmental and non-natural factors to understand the full image of hominin...
Recent Investigations of Maya Archaeological Site Looting in Petén, Guatemala (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Archaeological looting in the Maya area has been an enduring concern for over 60 years. While many individual archaeological projects have worked diligently to record looting within their respective project areas, the recent application of lidar in archaeology facilitates the large-scale study of illicit digging in the forested Maya region for the first...
Recent Research on the Formative and Early Classic Periods in the Yaxhom Valley, Yucatán (2018)
Previous investigations by the Bolonchen Regional Archaeological Project demonstrated that the Valle de Yaxhom, in the Puuc region of Yucatan, was a significant locus of monumental construction during the latter Middle Formative and early Late Formative. Two large acropoli, the Acropolis Yaxhom and the Acropolis Lakin, were previously mapped and tested, but the nature of accompanying residential construction remained unknown. Two other sites with megalithic architecture, Nucuchtunich and Nohoch...
Reorienting Frontiers and Borderlands: Recent Research on the Usumacinta River (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Frontiers and borderlands are often conceptualized as places of precarity, where uncertainty characterizes communities outside the purview of authority. In contrast, borders evoke the presence of a reinforced authority where physical and political structures have been put in place to fortify a territory. However, these approaches often simplify or distill...
Retracing the Middlebrook Encampments of the American Revolutionary War: A Cartographic Analysis (2021)
This is an abstract from the session entitled "Revisiting Revolutionary America" , at the 2021 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology. The Continental Army occupied a strategic section of the Watchung Mountains of New Jersey during the spring of 1777 and winter of 1778-79. More than 5,000 soldiers were encamped over a 10-square-mile area of Washington Valley in Somerset County. During what is known as the Middlebrook Encampments, the soldiers modified the terrain in this...
Risk Assessment of Archaeological Sites Using Lidar: Sea level Rise Modeling at Jamestown Island, VA (2017)
Jamestown Island contains low-lying terrain with archaeological sites, known and unknown, threatened by sea level rise. Using data acquired from the United States Geological Survey (USGS), a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) was created using a Light Detection and Ranging Remote Sensing technique (LIDAR) to identify cultural sites and assist in planning for cultural remediation. Four scenarios of sea level rise modeling were created based on historic trends and projected environmental events...
The Ruins of a Plantation-Era Landscape: Using LiDAR and Pedestrian Survey to Locate Montserrat’s 17th-19th Century Colonial Past. (2016)
The Caribbean island of Montserrat’s historic and prehistoric cultural history is threatened by volcanic activity, modern development, and the natural processes accompanying mountainous, tropical environments. Survey and Landscape Archaeology on Montserrat (SLAM) aims to document the nature and location of archaeological sites to inform our understanding of the island’s colonial landscape. Because many areas are not easily accessible, SLAM conducted a hybrid survey process utilizing LiDAR...