Used to think aerial archaeology was just rich people with drones

I always figured ground surveys and test pits were the only real way to find stuff. Then I saw the 2017 Lidar survey of Caracol in Belize. They mapped over 200 square kilometers of jungle in under two weeks and found causeways and reservoirs nobody knew existed. You cannot dig that fast in a hundred years of field seasons. I am still a trench guy at heart, but I get the hype now. Has anyone else had their mind changed by a remote sensing project?

3 comments

3 Comments

paige_ellis593d ago

That Caracol lidar survey definitely proved the tech can find things we'd miss for decades. But I still wonder how many subtle features get flattened out or misread when you're only looking at a processed digital image from above. Nothing beats getting your hands in the dirt and actually seeing the color change, the artifact in profile, the thing that makes you go "oh, that's a wall, not a tree root.

paulw633d ago

You cannot dig that fast in a hundred years of field seasons" - that's the part that got me too. I remember a few years back working a site in Ohio, just trying to find a suspected prehistoric mound that was supposedly flattened by farming. We spent three summers digging test pits and never found it. Then a buddy with a drone flew over with some kind of thermal camera during a cold snap. Turned out the buried soil held heat differently, and the outline showed up clear as day. We walked right to it the next morning with shovels. Makes you wonder what else is just sitting there under our feet that we've been walking over forever.

wyatt_shah851d ago

@paulw63 I'm still not sold on the hype though. Thermal cameras and lidar are cool tricks but they're just that - tricks. You still gotta dig to prove anything exists. All this fancy tech and people still miss obvious stuff right under their noses.