Terrestrial Laser Scanning: a methodology for documenting existing and extrapolating past setting on archaeological sites

Author(s): Sudhagar Nagarajan; Christian Davenport

Year: 2016

Summary

The Jupiter Inlet I (8PB34) site is one of the most investigated prehistoric sites in Palm Beach County, Florida. Like many of the ancient shell works sites across the state it was partially destroyed for road fill during the first half of the 20th century. Only a sketch map of the site from 1883 depicts what the site looked like prior to destruction. Since then there have been attempts to reconstruct the mound form but these relied on verbal accounts and limited stick and scope survey methods. In 2007-08 LiDAR was flown over the coast and eventually made into a DEM. Both the raw LiDAR and DEM files were employed to determine if differences in elevations observed in the field corresponded to features depicted in the 1883 map. The results of this analysis were encouraging but to improve the accuracy, the mound was 3D scanned using Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) technique. This lecture will present the results of the scanning including a calculation of the volume of the remaining shell mound along with the volume estimate change between 1883 and 2015.

Cite this Record

Terrestrial Laser Scanning: a methodology for documenting existing and extrapolating past setting on archaeological sites. Sudhagar Nagarajan, Christian Davenport. Presented at The 81st Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Orlando, Florida. 2016 ( tDAR id: 405383)

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Keywords

Geographic Keywords
North America - Southeast

Spatial Coverage

min long: -91.274; min lat: 24.847 ; max long: -72.642; max lat: 36.386 ;