Beothuk Housepits in Virtual Environments

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Hearth and Home in the Indigenous Northeast" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The archaeology of interior Newfoundland is a poorly understood subject, and yet, there are more than 70 Beothuk housepits in the Exploits River Valley, comprising the majority of these features. The topography of these features has been recorded using traditional survey methods, producing poor data for spatial and morphological studies. This study reexamines these features through photogrammetric recording of Beothuk housepits as high-resolution 3D models. The 3D models of these features were then imported to a GIS to analyze their internal architecture using an experimental approach to visualizations. Approaching visualizations in this manner permits archaeological inferences about the surficial remains of structures through improved visibility of micro-topography. This study challenges prior beliefs about the paucity of internal features including benches and hearths, the external shape of the housepits, and the methods used here have allowed postdepositional processes such as looting and erosion to be analyzed.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Hearth and Home in the Indigenous Northeast

Keywords

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33250