Integrating LiDAR with Pedestrian Survey at the Ancient City of Angamuco, Michoacán, Mexico

Summary

Remote sensing techniques have enhanced studies of ancient urbanism particularly because they have improved the speed of data collection and our abilities to identify the extent of urban sites. Data derived from airborne laser scanning such as LiDAR have been rapidly incorporated to study settlement patterns in order to accelerate the survey process, but also to produce innovative and higher quality data. In this paper, we discuss the use of LiDAR and traditional pedestrian survey data at Angamuco, an ancient city within the Purépecha imperial heartland in Michoacán, western Mexico. Between 2009 and 2011, the Legacies of Resilience Project mapped over 7,000 architectural features that comprise roughly 17% of the 26 km2 Angamuco urban core. We explore how the integration of these data sets helps us to better understand urbanism and demography in pre-Hispanic Mexico and how these data can be used to document archaeological heritage that is impacted by modern development and looting.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Archaeological Surveys in Light of New Technologies   •
• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 17394