Geospatial Analysis of the Highbourne Cay Shipwreck Maritime Landscape

Summary

In archaeology, context is key. Advanced technology allows the expansion of accurate site context from in situ artifact assemblages to globally geo-referenced datasets. Custom aerial imagery over the Highbourne Cay littoral zone facilitated the creation of tailored orthomosaics and digital elevation models. Blended with bathymetry from underwater imaging, manually acquired data points, and public datasets, this geospatial analysis of the Highbourne Cay shipwreck littoral zone provides the most accurate and high resolution geo-referenced maritime landscape of the site to date. Custom digital network infrastructure facilitated this, providing the team connectivity and data-sharing capabilities over great distances on this remote island in the Exumas, Bahamas. Geospatial perspective is critical to understanding our submerged cultural heritage; cultivating it in the Converging Worlds research design from the beginning permitted a much more complete and accessible project, for both the present and the future. 

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Converging Worlds: Excavation of the Highbourne Cay Shipwreck   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2018

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 797