Remote Sensing/Geophysics (Other Keyword)
26-50 (289 Records)
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 and Possibilities for New Urban Comparisons at and Around Cahokia Mounds, USA (2024)
This is an abstract from the "*SE Big Data and Bigger Questions: Papers in Honor of David G. Anderson" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Situated in present-day Collinsville, Illinois, Cahokia Mounds is considered globally as the premier example of precontact American Indian urbanism in North America. However, understandings of Cahokia’s early population density, spatial arrangement, and scale are primarily drawn from relatively small areas within...
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...
Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park: Archaeological Investigations and Geophysical Survey (2024)
This is an abstract from the "New and Emerging Geophysical and Geospatial Research in the National Parks" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Brown v. Board of Education National Historical Park commemorates the US Supreme Court’s 1954 decision to end legal racial segregation in public education and preserves significant resources like Monroe Elementary School in Topeka, Kansas. Before opening to the public on the ruling’s 50th anniversary, the Midwest...
Changes in Indigenous Occupation Strategies in Eastern Pennsylvania: An Exploration of Changing Land Use at the Red Hole Site (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This poster summarizes the preliminary results of a survey conducted in eastern Pennsylvania exploring land use through time performed as part of a master’s thesis. The Red Hole site is in Schuylkill County’s anthracite region and was identified in 1968 as a multicomponent campsite with occupations ranging from the Archaic to the contact periods. Due to...
Changing Shorelines and Maritime Foraging during the Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene along California’s Northern Channel Islands: Assessing Settlement Patterns with Chirp Subbottom Data (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Coastal Environments in Archaeology: Ancient Life, Lore, and Landscapes" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The California Northern Channel Islands contain one of the best preserved and most abundant records of terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene human occupation in all of North America. These records have contributed to our understanding of early coastal migrations, the importance of Paleoindian maritime economies,...
Changing the Picture – 1000 Hectare High Resolution Magnetometry on the Protected Zone of a World Heritage Site at Avebury, UK (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. Avebury and Stonehenge, two iconic prehistoric sites in the heart of England, both listed on UNESCO’s list of world heritage have undergone intensive research during the past century. Nevertheless, evolving technologies open access to new data on a landscape scale, thus adding more and surprising information helping to...
Characterizing Purépecha Urbanism (2018)
At the time of European contact the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin (LPB) was the geopolitical core of the Purépecha (Tarascan) Empire (A.D. 1350-1520), and has long been recognized as a Mesoamerican core region . Cities were an important component of Purépecha statecraft but comparatively little is known about their general characteristics, organization, and evolution. Here I explore the use and division of space within the ancient city of Angamuco to document the development of social complexity, complex...
Cheng and the Question of Large Walled Settlements in Neolithic China (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Theorizing Prehistoric Large Low-Density Settlements beyond Urbanism and Other Conventional Classificatory Conventions" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Large Neolithic settlements (approximately 1–4 km2 in size) surrounded by rammed earth walls or moat enclosures are frequently referred to as cheng (often translated as “the walled city”) in Chinese archaeology and analyzed as proto-urban centers through Childe’s notion...
Cherokee-Spanish Interactions in the Middle Nolichucky Valley, Tennessee, Revealed by Geophysics and Targeted Excavations (2018)
The Middle Nolichucky River in northeast Tennessee has been largely overlooked in Mississippian prehistoric narratives, but recent geophysical surveys and archaeological excavations at the Cane Notch site document a mid- to late- 16th century Cherokee Town with evidence of Spanish contact. Our multimethod approach includes sitewide magnetometry and a large portion covered with ground penetrating radar (GPR). Excavation of a house floor unearthed a rich assemblage of glass trade beads and...
Cities in the Heartland of the Mongol Empire (2019)
This is an abstract from the "From Campsite to Capital – Mobility Patterns and Urbanism in Inner Asia" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. From 2016 to 2018 the two largest cities of the Mongol Empire, 13/14th century, in nowadays Mongolia were mapped using a SQUID-(Superconducting Quantum Interference Device)-magnetometer coupled with a DGPS. Thanks to this pioneering technique it was possible to create a high precision topographic and magnetic map in...
Ciudad de Dios: An Analysis of Destruction Using Drone Technology (2019)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In July of 2018, the archaeological site of Ciudad de Dios, located in the Moche Valley of the north coast of Peru, was surveyed using a drone. The digital map was then used to not only analyze the settlement’s organization, but also the natural and unnatural destruction that has affected the preservation of the site. Excavated by MOCHE Inc. in 1998, Ciudad de...
Clam Gardens as Coastal Landscape Agents: The Case of Shingle Point, Valdes Island, British Columbia (2023)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In recent years, mariculture has been the focus of numerous anthropological and archaeological studies across the Northwest Coast. Clam gardens (also sea gardens) were utilized by Salish peoples to provide food security, sustainability, and resilience. As elements of the built environment they also represent significant engagements with coastal landscapes....
Classic Maya Urbanism at Dzibanche Revealed by Airborne Lidar Mapping (2024)
This is an abstract from the "The Rise and Apogee of the Classic Maya Kaanu’l Hegemonic State at Dzibanche" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Lidar survey of the city of Dzibanche reveals the city's settlement to be more extensive and populous than previously thought and consistent with its political reach as a hegemonic state. A closer look at the organization of public spaces within its center reveals architectural arrangements that appear to share...
Coba's Periphery and Rethinking Site Boundaries (2018)
Time and again the application of new technologies has allowed archaeologists to rethink their understandings of ancient cultural landscapes. Lidar, in particular, is one technology that has rapidly transformed our analytical capabilities by simultaneously providing wide regional and finely localized views of archaeological sites. In this paper, we present new lidar data that is reshaping our understanding of the Northern Maya Lowland metropolis of Coba. In particular we discuss features on...
Combining Aerial Lidar and Deep Learning to Detect Archaeological Features in the Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia (2024)
This is an abstract from the "Big Ideas to Match Our Future: Big Data and Macroarchaeology" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A growing number of archaeologists are using lidar-derived high-resolution Digital Terrain Models (DTM) to detect and document archaeological features. Early adopters used visualizations to manually detect archaeological features; however, recent technological advances provide new tools that can considerably increase the...
Comparative Evidence of Maritime Activity in the Early Swahili Harbours of Zanzibar (2018)
The Swahili of East Africa are regarded historically as a maritime culture, whose coastal sailing networks and prosperous Indian Ocean trade connections can be dated back to at least the 7th century CE. Archaeological investigations have demonstrated that maritime elements were deliberately embedded in the architecture of the famous second millennium Swahili stonetowns, but a focus on urban areas has sometimes been at the expense of areas of potential maritime infrastructure within settlements,...
Comparing plane-based and drone-based LiDAR to pedestrian surveys in the American Southwest (2024)
This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. LiDAR surveys have revealed vast areas of ancient human settlement in parts of the world that are poorly known due to dense vegetative cover, but the use of LiDAR as a survey tool has not been fully explored in regions like the American Southwest that feature minimal vegetation and generally good surface visibility. Our research program in the Lion...
Constructing Communities: A New Magnetometry Survey at the John Chapman Site (2018)
The John Chapman site is a mounded village that lies along the Apple River in northwestern Illinois. At approximately A.D. 1050, it appears that Mississippian migrants traveled to the area and interacted with the Late Woodland people already occupying the land. Previous excavations in the northern portion of the site revealed John Chapman people changing their ceramics to emulate Mississippian styles, while keeping their houses Late Woodland-like. Recent magnetometry surveys targeted central and...