Digitally Augmented Survey of Southern Veracruz Using Open-Source LiDAR Data

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Regional and Intensive Site Survey: Case Studies from Mesoamerica" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In recent years, the Mexican Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI) released a LiDAR-based digital elevation module (DEM) that provides a mechanism to augment the area covered by pedestrian surveys. The DEM is of low resolution (5-m horizontal grid) compared to research-grade LIDAR studies in Mesoamerica, but the southern half of Veracruz is largely deforested and mounded architecture less than 1-m tall can be detected in many cases. The coverage using INEGI’s open-source DEM is massive compared to pedestrian surveys and higher-resolution, research-grade LIDAR. In a prior test for a study area in south-central Veracruz, Stark and Stoner (2017) compared remote detection of formal architectural complexes with those identified through pedestrian survey, finding a high concordance between the two survey techniques. We move forward in the current study by describing the distribution and characteristics of centers with monumental architecture identified for the southern Veracruz lowlands (Tuxtlas Mountains excluded) on the basis of the INEGI DEM. The results expand information spatially from the three systematic pedestrian surveys in southern Veracruz that have been undertaken in the past.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Regional and Intensive Site Survey: Case Studies from Mesoamerica   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25170