Lidar Research in the US Southwest

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Lidar Research in the US Southwest" at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

From the depths of the ocean to the far reaches of space, lidar has come a long way since its inception in the 1960s. As one of the most transformative and versatile technologies, lidar has revolutionized the way we conceptualize our shared humanity. Lidar’s ability to penetrate dense vegetation and tree canopies reveals hidden topography making it an invaluable tool for identifying and researching previously unknown features including ancient irrigation systems, agricultural terraces, settlements, road networks, and much more. These data greatly expand our ability to reconstruct how peoples managed resources and organized social, economic, ritual, and political systems through time and across space. This symposium explores current lidar research in the present-day northern US Southwest to provide current insights on methodological applications, data sovereignty, cultural heritage preservation, land management, social networks, community formation and dissolution, agricultural production, and how past peoples manifested cosmological ideologies within their built environments.