Remote Sensing/Geophysics (Other Keyword)
101-125 (212 Records)
This paper examines shifting environmental paradigms in the Maya realm. Using Mayapán as a case study, a site long-considered to be located in a "marginal" environment for agricultural productivity, I will evaluate site resilience, sustainability, and self-sufficiency and use these concepts to create a more nuanced perspective of human-environment interactions. Data from Mayapán will be cross-referenced to other similar sites across the Maya region. I will show that assumptions about the...
Landscape Scale Ground Penetrating Radar and Magnetometry at Tel Shimron, Jezreel Valley, Israel (2018)
Situated in Israel’s Jezreel Valley, Tel Shimron holds the remains of occupations from the Early Bronze Age through to the 20th century. It is one of the largest tels in the region, but had not been excavated before this summer. The Tel Shimron Excavation project aims to investigate tel stratigraphy and better understand regional dynamics with the Galilean Hills and the Mediterranean agricultural economy. We began in 2016 by conducting geophysical surveys over much of the tel to investigate the...
Large Centralized Fired-Clay Cooking Stoves of Communal Households on Marajoara Mounds at the Mouth of the Amazon c. AD 400–1100 (2018)
Rarely does the New World a thropological literature mention the existence of large centralized, multi-unit fired clay cooking structures of some prehistoric or recent indigenous Amazonian households. Yet these large, highly patterned features have been informative for archaeology from several points of view. Their existence and common presence as permanent structures built into the floors of prehistoric mound sites on Marajo Island have demonstrated that the mounds they occur in had sizeable,...
Large-Scale, Upland, Landscape Modification and the Implications for Classic Maya Population Density and Land Tenure in Northwestern Belize (2023)
This is an abstract from the "2023 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of Timothy Beach Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Lidar data from the 2016 survey and subsequent ground truthing and fieldwork in the settlement zone of the site of Xnoha have revealed a complex system of Linear Stone Boundary Markers surrounding house lots in residential areas surrounding the central precinct of the site. These are located on the tops of hills...
The Last Great Escape: Recovery of 1st Lt. Ewart Sconiers, an American World War II Bombardier Imprisoned at the Stalag Luft III POW Camp (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Applying the Power of Partnerships to the Search for America's Missing in Action" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Like many recoveries, locating 1st Lt. Ewart Sconiers required research, persistence, and good old-fashioned luck. While imprisoned at the Stalag Luft III POW camp in German-occupied Poland, complications from an injury sent Sconiers to a hospital in a neighboring town—where he died. His burial occurred in...
The Late Prehistory of Ecuador from Above and Below: Remote Sensing in the Northern Highlands (2018)
Remote sensing, including both low level aerial photography and subsurface geophysical methods, has become an increasingly key element in archaeological fieldwork over the last few decades. During that time, our team has used various techniques to accurately map late prehistoric Ecuadorian sites and to search for buried features. In the last two years we have used drone aerial photography, ground penetrating radar, and magnetometry to aid in investigations at the monumental site of Cochasquí....
Lend Me Your Ears: Modeling Traditional Maize Production at Las Cuevas, Belize (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Provisioning Ancient Maya Cities: Modeling Food Production and Land Use in Tropical Urban Environments" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Las Cuevas region, situated on the southeastern edge of the Vaca Plateau in western Belize, consists of several medium-sized centers dispersed between low hills, steep ridges, and small seasonal swamps. Although occupied only briefly during the Late Classic period (700–900 CE),...
Lidar Application in the Cerros Hojas-Jaboncillo, Manabi, Ecuador (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Innovations in Ecuadorian Archaeology" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Currently, precise and high-resolution lidar (light detection and ranging) data is increasingly important for the detection of archaeological settlements. Through this technology it has been possible to detect a series of landscape modifications in the Hojas-Jaboncillo massif that could be of prehispanic origin. During the field verification...
Lidar Reconnaissance of the Calakmul Urban Landscape (2023)
This is an abstract from the "A Session in Memory of William J. Folan: Cities, Settlement, and Climate" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Building on the work of William J. Folan, the Bajo Laberinto Archaeological Project, initiated in 2022, is focused on investigations of urbanism centered on the city of Calakmul in southern Campeche. An initial 100 km2 lidar survey along the northern rim of the Bajo Laberinto has revealed large, elaborate...
Lidar: Guided Archaeological Surveys in the Hinterlands of Northwestern Belize (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the last decade airborne mapping lidar has become an extremely valuable tool for archaeologists studying ancient settlement patterns. It has proven especially useful in regions covered by dense forests on which prospection with other remote sensing techniques is not possible. This paper contributes to the growing international dialogue regarding the use of...
Little Cabins on the Prairie: Preliminary Results from Geophysical Exploration and Archaeological Survey of the Chimney Coulee Métis Wintering Site, Canada (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Applications of remote sensing in historical archaeology have typically been surveys designed to locate large structures and have been less focused on the identification of ephemeral structural remains resulting from short-term occupation sites. Our research uses remote sensing methods, specifically ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and magnetic gradiometry, to...
Locating Wisconsin's Past Indigenous Agricultural Landscapes Using Historical Aerial Photography (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. Wisconsin has the largest number of recorded precolumbian and early historic Indigenous ridged and hilled garden beds in the American Midwest, with over 450 known examples. But, twentieth-century land-use practices have destroyed or obscured more than 90% of these sites. Leveraging a comprehensive database of...
Looking Closer at Those Dots on the Map: Documenting Mound Sites at St. Croix National Scenic Riverway (2018)
Over the last four years, the Midwest Archeological Center has been conducting a project designed to gather information on mound and earthwork preservation across the Midwest Region of the National Park Service. St. Croix National Scenic Riverway in eastern Minnesota and western Wisconsin, is one of several parks included in the study. The St. Croix and Namekagon river valleys are home to mounds and earthworks of a variety of shapes and sizes. Some have been dated to the Late Woodland period...
Loyalhanna Lake: A Geoarchaeological Approach to Understanding the Archaeological Potential of Floodplains (2018)
Unlike uplands, floodplains generally yield stratified deposits that may include deeply buried landscapes and archaeological sites. Most state specifications for cultural resources surveys require floodplains to be geomorphically evaluated in order to identify buried landscapes. This is most frequently accomplished via trenching, an effective, but timely, costly, and sometimes destructive method. This project reports on an alternative technique utilizing a multi-proxy methodology coupling...
Machine Learning Applications with Lidar to Predict Locations of Natural and Cultural Features in the Maya Lowlands (2021)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This project entails creating machine learning models to predict the locations of caves and archaeological features using airborne Lidar (laser scanning) data. The goal of this work is to bridge the gap between machine learning pursued by computer scientists and the types of on-the-ground projects of interest to scientists who seek to improve management and...
The Magnetic View of a Princely Landscape (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Monumental Surveys: New Insights from Landscape-Scale Geophysics" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Hallstatt period hilltop settlement at Mont Lassois and its environs have been the focus of archaeological interest ever since the discovery of the famous princely grave of the "Dame de Vix" in 1953. Several excavations as well as aerial and geophysical prospections have since explored the sites on top and around the...
Magnetometer Surveys and the Complex Prehistoric Landscape of Poverty Point, Louisiana (2018)
Poverty Point, Louisiana, is well-known for its massive architecture that includes earthen mounds and six semi-circular ridges. Geophysical surveys conducted over the past decade have revealed that the subsurface of this deposit also contains a large, extensive and diverse set of artificially constructed features. In addition, remote sensing demonstrates that features that have been often described as singular constructions are actually a palimpsest of overlapping depositional events. Here, we...
Magnetometry Survey at the Mann Site: A Rich New Dataset on Hopewell Ceremonialism (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Monumental Surveys: New Insights from Landscape-Scale Geophysics" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Mann site in southwest Indiana is one of the largest Hopewell ceremonial centers in the Midwest and also one of the least studied. The site, which was occupied between A.D. 200 and 500, consists of flat-topped, conical, and geometric earthworks, similar to those from Hopewell complexes in Ohio and elsewhere. The most...
Mapping Agricultural Terraces on the Copacabana Peninsula, Bolivia, Tsing Multispectral Satellite Imagery (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Copacabana Peninsula of Lake Titicaca, in modern Bolivia and Peru, is a landscape that has been heavily modified through the construction of stone terraces on the slopes facing the shores of Lake Titicaca and the intermontane valley systems. Previous research by the Yaya-Mama Archaeological Project has demonstrated that terrace construction began...
Mapping the Maya Hinterlands: A LiDAR-Derived Approach to Identify Small-Scale Features in Northwestern Belize (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 will discuss the processes and methods of relief visualization of LiDAR-derived digital elevation models (DEM’s) and classification of secondary data to identify archaeological remains on the Maya landscape in northwestern Belize. The basis of the research explores various GIS and cartographic techniques to visualize topographical relief. Graphic...
Monte Alban’s Main Plaza: New Perspectives Gained Through Geophysical Prospection and Digital Mapping (2018)
Ongoing scholarly debate concerning the function, meaning, and history of Monte Albán’s Main Plaza have important ramifications for our understanding of sociopolitical, economic, and religious life at the Zapotec capital. Although previous investigations have targeted many of the buildings that surround the plaza, none have focused explicitly on the plaza itself. This paper presents the preliminary results of the Proyecto Geofísico de Monte Albán (PGMA), a non-invasive study of the entire Main...
Moving up in the World: Comparing Magnetic Gradiometer Survey Results from Monumental Sites Using Small, Medium, and Large Magnetometer Systems (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Monumental Surveys: New Insights from Landscape-Scale Geophysics" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The problem with monumental earthwork sites in Ohio is that they are, well, monumental in scale! These large sites, many topping 50 ha in area, are a major challenge for geophysical surveys because they simply require too much time to completely survey. However, recent advances in instrumentation and computers is making it...
Multi-Method Geophysics in the Frank Church - River of No Return Wilderness, Idaho (2018)
The Frank Church – River of No Return Wilderness in central Idaho contains numerous prehistoric archaeological sites being impacted by recreational use. Sites located along the wild and scenic portion of the Middle Fork Salmon River are especially at-risk because of the thousands of visitors who regularly camp along the river within sensitive site areas. Non-ground disturbing methods were needed to determine whether the sites retain sub-surface integrity. Eight sites have been investigated using...
A Multi-temporal Analysis of Archaeological Site Destruction Using Landsat Satellite Data and Machine Learning, Moche Valley, Peru (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The destruction of archaeological sites and the loss of archaeological landscapes remains a global concern as populations and urban areas continue to expand. Archaeological sites are not only significant to local communities, national identities, and modern tourist economies but also provide critical knowledge of past sociocultural interactions, settlement...
Multisensor Geophysical Survey of Monte Albán’s Main Plaza (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Monumental Surveys: New Insights from Landscape-Scale Geophysics" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the summer of 2017, we conducted a landscape-scale geophysical survey of the Main Plaza at Monte Albán, Oaxaca, Mexico. We obtained full coverage of the plaza with gradiometry, electrical resistance, and ground-penetrating radar and also generated a centimeter-level accuracy map using a drone and a robotic total...