A Study of George White through Flight and Light

Summary

Imaging is a critical part of the archaeologist’s toolkit. Likewise, the capture, manipulation, enhancement, and interpretation of images has been the subject of significant research in computing over the past 20 years. This project brought together five students studying archaeology and computing to collaborate on fieldwork—and the hardware and software that supports that fieldwork—to engage in an exploration of the life of George White, a freed slave and property owner in Madison and Jackson counties during the mid- to late-19th century, that would otherwise be impossible undertaken separately. This interdisciplinary research project relied on macro-scale, overhead drone images of sites as well as high-resolution, micro-scale RTI dome images of excavated artifacts. George White’s story will add a new dimension to our understanding of the lives of freed blacks in the 19th century in Madison County and add to the growing database of significant archaeological resources located within the Berea College Forest. More broadly, this research will contribute to a greater understanding of how enslaved individuals in Kentucky purchased their freedom and established themselves as property owners in an unstable pre-Civil War world.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22443