Repurposing Scale in Three Mesoamerican Centers: Landscape Archaeology and High-Resolution 3D Modeling at Teotihuacan, Altar de Sacrificios, and Los Mogotes

Summary

With the rise of structure from motion (SfM), affordable unmanned aerial vehicles, and other advances in remote sensing, landscape archaeology is at a watershed moment. These new tools allow for the mapping and digital reconstruction of large swaths of land rapidly enough to be reviewed in the field at a spatial, spectral, and temporal resolution that rivals any previous technology. Away from the field, these reconstructions are invaluable datasets that can be used to analyze the landscape at scales ranging from a few square centimeters to over a dozen square kilometers. This conceptual normalization of broad scales of the landscape to a size that we can comfortably interact with has wide implications when it comes to initial project design, on-the-ground decision-making, data analysis, and broader outreach. In this presentation, these possibilities are interactively explored with color, high-resolution (between three to five centimeters) digital landscape reconstructions of Teotihuacan and Los Mogotes in Central Mexico and Altar de Sacrificios in the Petén Lowlands, along with Parrot Sequoia high-resolution (between seven to ten centimeters) multispectral imagery for the two highland cases.

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): 21725