The Use of Aerial Drones to Map, Monitor, and Analyze Inuit Sites in Northern Labrador

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Arctic Pasts: Dimensions of Change" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

A photogrammetric revolution has occurred in archaeology with the appearance of software that allows objects, features, sites, and landscapes to be finely rendered as automatically stitched photomosaics and navigable 3D models. The simultaneous emergence of reasonably priced remotely piloted aircraft (RPAs, or drones) that can produce suitably high-resolution photographs has been particularly transformative in the North, where thin ground cover exposes archaeological traces, and much of which falls outside of the restricted airspace that constrains drone operations in built-up areas. Since 2016 archaeologists from Memorial University have employed a variety of drones to map Inuit and other sites in northern Labrador, generating large photographic datasets that precisely record surface features within their landscape setting. The research possibilities of drone imagery are illustrated with a case study from the precontact and early historic Inuit winter village of Kivalekh where experimental analyses of the RPA datasets, including green-band manipulation in sequential imagery, have yielded promising results.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Arctic Pasts: Dimensions of Change

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32489