The Utility of Public LiDAR Data for Detecting and Documenting Low-Relief Archaeological Sites: A Case Study from the Pockoy Island Shell Rings, Charleston County, South Carolina

Summary

This paper evaluates the utility of high-resolution LiDAR-derived elevation data for remotely surveying difficult-to-access coastal areas to identify possible archaeological sites, which can then be targeted for further investigation. To determine the effective limits of the elevation data to visualize low-relief structures, locations of previously-recorded Archaic and Woodland-period shell rings along the lower Atlantic coast were examined. Thirty-four rings were identified, including two previously undetectable at ground level without the use of shallow geophysics. To determine if undocumented rings could also be located using this method, the survey was then extended to an area along the South Carolina coast where shell rings were not previously documented, but which is situated a few kilometers from several known rings. In multiple LiDAR datasets, two faint ring-shaped anomalies were identified within the survey area. Fieldwork in May and July of 2017 confirmed that both anomalies represented low-relief Late Archaic shell rings. We conclude with preliminary data from the July fieldwork on the two rings, and contrast site maps produced using the LiDAR-derived data with those from ground-based topographical mapping, subsurface probing, and shovel testing. With moderate processing to filter "noise" in the dataset, high-resolution LiDAR-based maps rival those produced using ground-based methods.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21496