Measures of Influence: Volumetric Assessment of Earthworks at Angel Mounds Using Drone-Based Lidar

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Angel Mounds State Historic Site, a Middle Mississippian fortified mound center along the Ohio River, is home to 11 man-made earthworks which make up the largest known archaeological site in Indiana. Angel’s occupation coincides with the regional changes in social organization that characterize Mississippian society. Many archaeologists have discussed mound volume as a proxy for complexity, but calculation methods and interpretations are varied and outdated. Increased accessibility to drone-mounted remote sensing technologies has provided archaeologists with unprecedented control over the frequency and spatial resolution of data collection. This trend toward “personal” remote sensing enables the use of noninvasive, cost-effective survey methods in challenging landscapes, and provides more precise and accurate measurements than traditional aerial methods. In this paper we compare airplane-based lidar and drone-based lidar data and calculate the volume of earthworks at Angel Mounds State Historic Site using a combination of GIS and lidar software (ArcPro, Quick Terrain Modeler, and FUSION). These findings are extrapolated to assess labor investments for the mound’s construction and implications for the degree of sociopolitical complexity among Angel’s earliest inhabitants.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• SAA 2021: General Sessions

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32929