Remote Sensing/Geophysics (Other Keyword)
76-100 (212 Records)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The landscape of the Silver Glen Springs Archaeological Complex has been extensively modified for at least 9000 years, including the construction of shell mounds and wooden post structures. The focus of previous research at this complex on reconstructing the massive Shell mounds and monuments along the spring run has left the non-mounded areas...
Ground-Penetrating Radar as a Rapid Cultural Resource Management Technique for Shell Midden Delineation (2018)
The analysis of shell midden extent and thickness typically requires expensive and time-consuming excavation. Additionally, widely spaced test units provide limited and discontinuous stratigraphic information. Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) survey, in combination with stratigraphic information from limited excavation, can serve as a powerful tool for making rapid cultural resource management decisions. Although processing and correlating the data requires several days of additional time, this...
he Best Offense Is a Good Defense: Monumental Defensive Works at La Cuernavilla (2023)
This is an abstract from the "La Cuernavilla, Guatemala: A Maya Fortress and Its Environs" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ancient Maya center La Cuernavilla is well known for its defensive features and its role as a fortress located between the Classic Maya cities of Tikal and El Zotz in the Buenavista Valley of modern-day Guatemala. Excavations of the defensive features as well as the analysis of the artifacts collected during excavations...
Hidden in the Hills No Longer: LiDAR Coverage in the Puuc Region of Yucatan, Mexico. (2018)
LiDAR imagery is revolutionizing interpretations of ancient Maya demography, land use, and community organization, among other concerns. This paper provides preliminary observations on LiDAR coverage of 200 km2 of the Puuc region of northern Yucatan, Mexico, collected in 2017 by NCALM. The Bolonchen Regional Archaeological Project has been working in this area since 2000,and although we have intensively studied settlement at both the urban and intersite level, LiDAR provides the opportunity to...
Hidden Structures at El Mirador: Challenges and Prospects (2021)
This is an abstract from the "Recent Multidisciplinary Investigations in the Mirador Basin, Guatemala" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Invisible structures present serious and difficult to solve challenges for Mayanists. Despite a generation of research into Classic period invisible structures, we know little about their prevalence, history, or range of uses. We know even less about invisible structures from the Preclassic. Invisible structures are...
Hidden Structures, Ground Penetrating RADAR, and the Demography of El Mirador (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Preclassic El Mirador polity collapsed around 150 C.E. One focus of explanations of El Mirador’s collapse is anthropogenic changes to Basin ecology, centered on 1) population growth and agricultural overexploitation; and 2) conspicuous consumption of stucco for elite construction. Reliable estimates of population are essential for evaluating these...
High-Density Urban Living at Middle Bronze Age Kurd Qaburstan, Iraq (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In Upper Mesopotamia the Middle Bronze Age (2000 – 1600 B.C.E.) marked the regrowth of cities following the decline or collapse of cities at the end of the Early Bronze Age. Researchers question the degree of continuity in urban space across these periods and some have suggested that Middle Bronze Age cities were "hollow," containing relatively small built-up...
High-Precision Photogrammetry Mapping of the South Kohala Agricultural Field System, Hawai‘i Island (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Many archaeologists employ high-precision remote sensing to study surface remains at a landscape scale. Hawaiian archaeologists pioneered remote sensing using aerial photography in the Kohala peninsula of north Hawaiʻi Island, beginning in the 1960s, and it was the location for the first regional-scale application of lidar in Hawai‘i. In March 2022,...
High-Resolution Geophysical Characterization of Geology and Acoustic Water Column Signatures in Willamette Valley Reservoirs, Oregon, USA (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Future Directions for Archaeology and Heritage Research in the Willamette Valley, Oregon" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Inland flood-control reservoirs represent a novel analog for studying submerged terrestrial landscapes. The same scale and time-independent processes that impact coastal environments through sea-level changes are also produced through a reservoir’s annual draft and fill cycles. Within these...
Holocene Floodplain Development of Qujiang, Zhejiang, China in the Context of Early Human Occupation of Jinhua Basin (2018)
The Qujiang drains mountainous terrain in Zhejiang Province of east-central China. Shangshan cultures have been identified on floodplain terraces and earth mounds within the Qujiang valley. The choice of settlement in the area (10,000+ years BP) is constrained by several geographical factors, including topography, climate, access to water resources and human factors. The relationship between cultural occupation sites and river dynamics over the Holocene is poorly known in this region. Lateral...
Hopewellian Woodhenges: Recent Research at Hopewell Culture National Historical Park (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. Monumental timber post circles or "woodhenges" are ancient and enduring elements in the ritual landscapes of Native North America. Examples are known from as much as 3500 years ago at Poverty Point; from 2400 years ago in Adena ceremonial contexts in the Ohio Valley; from 1000 years ago at Cahokia; and in contemporary use...
Identifying Cultural Landscapes in Wilderness Areas on the Francis Marion National Forest (2018)
Wilderness is often interpreted to mean areas of pristine nature lacking evidence of human activity. But how realistic is this view given the length of human occupation where many endeavored to mold the landscape to suit their needs? The Francis Marion National Forest is positioned at the northern end of the Sea Islands Coastal Region of the South Atlantic Slope and contains four designated wilderness areas. Given the size and condition of the two largest wilderness areas the Forest Service...
Illuminating Haiti’s Royal Past: Advancing Analytics Through 3D Data Fusion of Terrestrial Surface Models and Subsurface Geophysical Data (2018)
Since 2015, the Milot Archaeological Project has conducted a series of archaeological explorations at the Royal Palace of Henry Christophe in the town of Milot in Northern Haiti. This site, called Sans-Souci, was a principal site of political authority in the short-lived Kingdom of Haiti (1811-1820) and is a UNESCO World Heritage site of paramount importance to national development strategies in Haiti. Working with the Institute Sauvegarder du Patrimoine Cultural (Haiti), the Bureau National...
Illuminating the Obscure: Using Legacy LiDAR Data to Define and Interpret a WWII Airfield on the Island of Tinian, Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) (2018)
Tinian International Airport in the CNMI is a repurposed portion of West Field, a WWII U.S. airbase constructed in 1944 for B-29 operations against Japan. In 2017, HDR conducted a cultural resource inventory for proposed airport infrastructure improvements, focusing on West Field and the adjacent Japanese-built Gurguan Point Airfield. Survey was complicated by dense secondary forest that obscures the two airfields, rendering many features invisible from the air. To assist with mapping these...
The Impersistence of Persistent Places on the St. Johns River, Florida (2018)
"Persistent places"—natural or terraformed locations that draw repeated human action—are unique resources for archaeologists investigating deep-time phenomena. Not only do they allow us to track social and ecological changes anchored in space, the repeated tending to such places set in motion historical path dependencies for descendent communities. However, at the human scale persistence is never a taken for granted, but is produced by the projects of communities who incorporate places into...
Implications of Integrative Science Approaches for Site Documentation at Bia Ogoi (2018)
Deep in the Washington Territory amongst American expansionism, one of the nation’s most devastating conflicts occurred. On the frigid morning of January 29th 1863, the California Volunteers under the command of Patrick Connor attacked the Shoshone village at Bia Ogoi in response to ongoing hostilities between whites and Native groups, resulting in the death of at least 250 Shoshone and 21 soldiers. Over the course of the past 150 years, extensive landscape modification has occurred from both...
Inferring Iroquoian Architectural Variability from Magnetic Gradiometry (2018)
Magnetic gradiometry is an affordable and preservation-minded method to detect a wide range of subsurface features at historic and prehistoric archaeological sites. Horizontal excavation is the only way to confirm the nature of features detected by magnetic gradiometry, but in some cases may be impossible or undesirable. Excavation-based understandings of local architectural practices can be used to infer the nature of magnetic anomalies, as long as those understandings encompass the full range...
Initial Results from Magnetometer Survey at the Sacred Site of Dakajalan, Mali (2018)
In the spring of 2017 geophysical remote sensing surveys were conducted across three locations at and around the Dakajalan sacred site, Commune Rurale de Sanankoroba, Mali in order to detect anomalies associated with archaeological features. This site has been described in oral tradition as the location where the battle that proceeded the formation of the Mali Empire took place, and also where the village that acted as the first capital of the newly formed empire was located. Surface survey of...
Integrating Public Archaeology and Technology to Convey the History of the Mt Tabor AME Zion Church and Its Community (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Mt Tabor AME Zion Church is located in Mt Holly Springs, Pennsylvania and is a standing log cabin structure that dates to 1871. There is an active descendant African American community around the Mt Tabor AME Zion Church that is proud of their heritage and would like to tell their story. The main goal of this project is to interpret survey data from the...
Interpreting the Past: How Transdisciplinary Research Advances the Field of Maya Archaeology (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. Human-nature relationships are key to understanding past societal developments. The value of conducting transdisciplinary research, involving new methods and other investigators, has become increasingly apparent as the field of Maya Studies has matured. While there has continued to be a significant increase in the...
Investigación con sensores remotos en la colina piramidal de Tulcán, Popayán, Colombia (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. El Morro Tulcán es una colina de forma piramidal de 5 ha, modificada antrópicamente, que representa la estructura monumental prehispánica más grande del suroccidente colombiano. Las excavaciones arqueológicas realizadas hace 50 años en el sitio evidenciaron que se dispusieron centenares de adobes y rellenos de tierra de manera ordenada en un área mayor a 2...
Investigating the Reforestation of Anthropogenic Landscapes through Remote Sensing (2018)
While New England is today a mostly forested landscape, up to 80% of this region was deforested during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for agricultural land-use. As the rural economy of New England shifted to a more urban and industrial one, much of this agricultural land was abandoned and subsequently reforested. The vestiges of this once rural landscape can now best be seen in LiDAR imagery, in which features such as stonewalls are particularly well discernible. Though the spatial and...
Issues Reconstructing the Ancient Population of El Mirador, Guatemala (2018)
El Mirador, in the northern Peten, has redefined our ideas about the Maya Preclassic. Its massive architecture and its complex system of sacbes compare to the largest Classic period centers. Unlike many of its smaller Preclassic neighbors, El Mirador collapsed at the dawn of the Classic. Understanding El Mirador’s organization, economy, and relationship to its environment requires detailed knowledge of the site’s population trajectory. Reconstructing El Mirador’s population trajectory, we face a...
Know Before You Dig: Using Comparative Geophysical Exploration and Ground-Truthing for Surgical Excavation (2019)
This is an abstract from the "New Multidisciplinary Research at 48PA551: A Middle Archaic (McKean Complex) Site in Northwest Wyoming" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster presents the results of geophysical exploration and excavation from new research at 48PA551, a Middle Archaic (McKean Complex) site in the Sunlight Basin of NW Wyoming. In the field season of 2017, total field magnetic survey was conducted at the site to identify and...
Land-Use Change and Its Impact on Archaeological Sites in the Nepeña 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 Nepeña Valley, located in northern Peru, is home to several important archaeological sites spanning the complete prehistoric chronology in the Peruvian Andes. During the COVID pandemic after 2019, much of the oversight and efforts at cultural preservation and archaeological preservation were halted due to a national shutdown. During this shutdown, land...