Lidar Predictive Modeling of Kalapuya Mound Sites in the Calapooia Watershed, Oregon

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Future Directions for Archaeology and Heritage Research in the Willamette Valley, Oregon" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This presentation details the development, testing, and results of a lidar and remote sensing predictive model to locate precontact mound sites in the Calapooia Watershed in the Willamette Valley, Oregon. Not much is known about these mound sites archaeologically, including where they are located in the 234,000-acre watershed. Additionally the watershed is 94% privately owned, making traditional archaeological survey impractical. To address this problem, I used ArcMap, lidar data, and aerial photography to develop a Kalapuyan mound predictive model. Development of the model included filtering the lidar dataset to remove “noise”/ non-mound features, as well as inverting and digitally flooding the lidar dataset to identify inverted mounds. Testing included lab verification of the models ability to identify previously recorded mound sites and a focused pedestrian survey of the project area to assess whether the model identified previously unrecorded mounds. Four land parcels were surveyed and 22 model-identified sites were visited, with seven sites verified as newly recorded Kalapuyan mounds.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Future Directions for Archaeology and Heritage Research in the Willamette Valley, Oregon   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35660.0