Using Drones for Exploring the Links between Vegetation and Traditional Archaeological Survey: An Example from Arizona

Summary

The use of drone based photogrammetry is now well established in archaeology for surface modeling and mapping of archaeological sites. The Arizona Department of Emergency and Military Affairs (AZDEMA) is sponsoring a number of longterm projects on their properties. One project will be using traditional drone photogrammetry to create high resolution maps to assess plant communities, plant health, and canopy structure as a way of exploring links between vegetation and other survey methods. A pedestrian survey, geophysical survey, and biological survey will be combined to show the interconnections between these frequently used techniques and the newer techniques of drone photography for surface modeling and vegetation modeling. With sub-centimeter accuracy, surface modeling along with canopy modeling is able to find subtle features on the landscape that are normally missed during pedestrian survey. Emergent photosynthetic populations, canopy variation, and biological dead zones can also be used to establish high probability anomaly areas that can be further investigated with traditional testing techniques. The results of the 2017-2018 field seasons will be summarized and the best practices for using these techniques will be presented. In areas with deeply buried features or in areas with few artifacts these techniques seem to be the most promising.

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): 22637