Remote Sensing/Geophysics (Other Keyword)
1-25 (212 Records)
This research looks at Tel Abu Shusha in the Jezreel Valley of Israel, an understudied site in a strategically important Levantine area with potential evidence of Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman settlements. Surface survey was completed in nine square kilometers around the Tel, resulting in ceramic density data as well as over 2,500 mapped surface features in GIS, such as quarries, wine presses, and architecture. Additionally, four magnetic susceptibility grids were taken in this area, each one...
Aerial Imaging Using UAVs (Drones) in Chihuahua and Nayarit, Mexico, to Map and Archive Archaeological Sites (2018)
In 2017, we used UAVs (drones) to record eight archaeological sites from the air. As this type of technology becomes more refined, we have found that it is especially useful in carrying out three specific tasks: contour mapping, archiving site conditions, and identifying architecture. This paper reports our findings resulting from aerial images captured while flying archaeological sites in Nayarit and Chihuahua, Mexico.
Agricultural Landscapes of the Mesopotamian-Zagros Borderlands (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Finding Fields: Locating and Interpreting Ancient Agricultural Landscapes" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Upper Diyala River Region in northern Iraq has long served as a strategic political, economic, and cultural borderland between the Mesopotamian alluvium and the Zagros Mountains. The region is also environmentally complex, encompassing a steep gradient of agroecological zones ranging from irrigated alluvial...
Albarradas, Solarés, and Classic Maya Land Tenure in Northwestern Belize (2018)
The traditional, but yet poorly-defined, view of Classic Maya (AD 250-850) land tenure was that control was somehow vested in the royal and elite parts of society with "commoners" occupying land at royal pleasure. The exceptions to this pattern were known in "urban" cities such as Coba and Chunchucmil in the northern Yucatan and some coastal locations such as Playa del Carmen and Cozumel. However, the latter instances are commonly thought to date to the Postclassic period and were believed to...
And here’s the NEWS from Xnoha! Understanding Maya settlement and Early Anthropocene Landscape Modifications at a small Maya center. (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Ancient Maya Landscapes in Northwestern Belize, Part I" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Xnoha is a small Maya center in northwestern Belize that has seen two phases of investigation since it was recorded in 1990. While current research is largely focused on the Central Precinct or kawik, we have also invested much energy in the outlying groups of monumental architecture and settlement. Xnoha is located in a heavily...
Anthropocene Amazonia, Beyond the Buzzword: Centennial-Scale Anthropogenic Influences on Southern Amazonian Forests, 1000-2000 CE (2018)
The Anthropocene is defined here as the time when human-induced alterations of the environment become a driver of regional and global climate. The Amazon has very deep histories of human alterations of forest systems, but settled occupations that dramatically altered forest structure in regional systems of Late Holocene age, particularly following the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), ca. 900-1300 CE. Global population loss in the Old World, beginning in the 13th century, and the demographic...
Applicability of Maxent Predictive Modeling in Locating Pre-Hispanic Quarries in the Callejón de Huaylas, Peru (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Stone in the Andes is an integral component of both the natural landscape and of the material expressions of cultural beliefs and practices. Growing evidence from multiple cultures indicates preferences for stone materials from certain sources, which held political, symbolic, and ideological importance. Determining quarry locations is a vital step in analyses...
Applying Geophysical Prospection to Interpret Historical Burial Practices at Two Cemeteries on St. Eustatius, Dutch Caribbean (2021)
This is an abstract from the "NSF REU Site: Exploring Globalization through Archaeology 2019–2020 Session, St. Eustatius, Dutch Caribbean" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This research examines the relationship between the Old Church Cemetery and the Jewish Cemetery on the Dutch Caribbean island of Sint Eustatius. These cemeteries are located near each other, yet the people buried in them had different religious ideologies and social positions....
Applying Simple Magnetic Depth Estimation Techniques to Archaeo-geophysics (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Magnetometry is probably the most widely used archaeo-geophysical technique in the world, despite its major drawback of an absence of depth information to an anomalous source. Many users, novices in particular, are under the impression that magnetometry does not or cannot provide depth information. Yet, depth estimation techniques are commonly utilized in...
Archaeo-rover: A Low-Cost Robotic System for the Collection of Geophysical Data (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Conventional methods for collection of ground penetrating radar (GPR), magnetic gradiometry, and other archaeo-geophysical data generally require precise grid layout ahead of surveys and significant labor to set up and move survey ropes, slowing data collection and creating a hurdle to larger, landscape-scale investigations. Although some commercial systems...
Archaeological Applications of Airborne LiDAR at the Maya Archaeological Site of El Palmar, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) survey has changed our perspectives on ancient Maya urbanism. In 2017, we conducted airborne lidar mapping at the Classic Maya city of El Palmar, located in southeastern Campeche, Mexico, covering a total area of 94 km2. Results show monumental architecture, possible marketplaces, causeways, vast intensive...
Archaeological Prospection at Cerro Coyotepetl, Tepeticpac, Tlaxcallan: Preliminary Results from the 2017 Field Season of the Proyecto de Arqueología Cotidiana de Tepeticpac (2018)
In this paper we present the preliminary results of our field season this past summer in the Cerro Coyotepetl neighborhood of Tepeticpac, a señorío of Tlaxcallan. Archaeological prospection methods and remote sensing included magnetometry, electrical resistivity and photogrammetry by drone. Though our work is ongoing, and another geophysical survey season is planned, results were confirmed by excavations on one domestic terrace. These excavations revealed the remains of four rooms whose...
Archaeological Prospection Using Aerial Thermography and Quantitative Image Processing Methods (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper explores new methods and developments in thermal remote sensing, aerial thermography, for archaeological research. These methods are applied in a pilot study at Picuris Pueblo, NM. Principles of thermal remote sensing that enable subsurface prospection are considered, along with previous investigations in this arena. Expanding upon existing...
Archaeological Remote Sensing at Damariscove Island and Colonial Pemaquid, Coastal Maine (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The region around modern Boothbay Harbor, Maine, is home to some of the earliest English colonial settlement in North America, with the establishment of a fishery in 1604 at Damariscove Island, and the subsequent growth of a town and fort on the mainland at nearby Pemaquid. Despite a long history of eighteenth and nineteenth century settlement and much...
Assessing Predictability of Dam Effects at Archaeological Sites Using Long-Term Repeat Lidar Surveys (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Repeat lidar surveys conducted over multiple years are a means of monitoring physical changes at archaeological sites with methods that are objective, replicable, accurate, and relatively low impact. These monitoring data can also be useful for testing assumptions about how archaeological site condition may change in response to changes in upstream dam...
Assessing the Viability of Shallow Geophysical Surveying to Identify Post-Removal Homesteads in Choctaw Nation (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In 2020, Choctaw Nation Historic Preservation (CNHP) began a project to identify and document Choctaw homesteads in Southeastern Oklahoma. Although these sites are an essential part of Choctaw cultural heritage, the locations of many of these sites remain unknown. To assist CNHP's goals of locating these culturally important sites, a "pilot study" was...
Automated Detection of Gridded Canal Networks in Veracruz, Mexico (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient peoples of Classic Period Veracruz employed a suite of strategies for agricultural intensification aimed at increasing agricultural yields and managing seasonal rainfall. One common strategy involved the construction of gridded canal networks with alternating raised field platforms which drained water in the wet season and retained it in the dry...
Automated Qanat Detection: Examining the Application of Deep-Learning in Archaeological Remote Sensing (2018)
This paper presents the preliminary results of a collaborative project that seeks to develop a deep learning model for automated detection of qanat shafts on CORONA Satellite Imagery. Increasing quantity of air and space-borne imagery available to archaeologists and advances in computational science has created an emerging interest in automated archaeological detection. Previous studies have applied machine learning algorithms for detection of archaeological sites and off-site features, with...
Behavioral Ecology and Evolutionary Approaches to Human-Environment Dynamics on Southwest Madagascar (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Behavioral Ecology and Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Madagascar’s southwestern coast has been inhabited by coastal foraging and fishing populations for over a millennium. Despite significant environmental changes in southwest Madagascar’s environment following human settlement, little is known about the scale, pace, and nature of human settlement and subsequent landscape modification. Recent...
Beneath the Surface: A Ground-Penetrating Radar Study at the Mary Rinn Site (36IN29) (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Little is known about the Mary Rinn Site’s cultural affiliation. The site is surrounded by better defined cultural groups such as the Monongahela and the Fishbasket complex. Limited excavations and research revealed evidence of possible housing structures and the trace of a stockade line. Surface collected materials from the Boyer Collection, and field school...
Beyond Newgrange: The Late Neolithic Complex at Brú na Bóinne, Co. Meath in Light of Recent Discoveries (2019)
This is an abstract from the "On the Periphery or the Leading Edge? Research in Prehistoric Ireland" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Brú na Bóinne World Heritage Site is known globally for its middle Neolithic passage tombs, in particular the 'megatombs' of Knowth, Dowth and Newgrange. However, the area also possesses one of the highest densities of late Neolithic monuments in the henge tradition anywhere in the world. These comprise a variety...
Big Data and Diplomacy: Aerial Images and U.S. Department of State Cultural Property Bilateral Agreements (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Vision in the Age of Big Data" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Big data in the form of aerial imagery gathered from drones, satellites, and archival spy images provide an historical time line of change over time of archaeological landscapes. The images of sites negatively affected by agriculture, development, looting, and urban growth are compelling and convincing in their documentation of destruction....
Big Data, Heritage Management, and the EAMENA Project (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Archaeological Vision in the Age of Big Data" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Heritage inventories are crucial for effective cultural heritage protection, especially during conflicts or disaster situations. Digital technologies, particularly remote sensing, are making it easier and faster than ever to create and disseminate these inventories, and collect data on a scale not previously possible. Since 2015, the...
The Black Mountain Phase in the Southern Mimbres Valley: Addressing the Last “Fuzzy” Phase in the Mimbres Area Cultural Sequence (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Black Mountain phase (AD 1180-1300) in the Mimbres Mogollon area is an important transition between the cessation of Classic Mimbres pottery production and masonry pueblos to a new suite of pottery types and poured adobe wall pueblos. Debate among Mimbres archaeologists primarily focuses on whether the occupants of Black Mountain phase sites were the...
Bridging the Gap: Spectral and Structural Analysis of Archaeological Settlement in El Zotz, Guatemala (2018)
In the last decade, archaeologist have successfully employed active remote sensing technologies, such as LiDAR, to identify ancient settlement in the Maya lowlands. Near the site of El Zotz in northern Guatemala, this technology has aided in the identification of fortresses, terraces, and a network of raised roads. Archaeologist who employ LiDAR focus principally on the structural data acquired from the LiDAR point clouds. Building on these methodologies, we assess the benefits of incorporating...