The Utilization of LiDAR to Detect Small Scale Archaeological Features

University Of New Hampshire, Durham NH

Investigators

Abstract

Humans have been modifying the landscapes in which they live for millennia. This is something that is easier to see, and so appreciate, when it is done on a large scale, such as the ancient pyramids of Egypt or the stone cities of the Inca or even the buildings and roads one lives in and moves through every day. While these more obvious changes to the environment are critical to understand, most societies did not leave such major modifications behind but they nevertheless altered their landscapes on a regular basis. Such smaller and more practical modifications, although once numerous, are today much less obvious. In order to gain a full appreciation of the ability of humans to transform their surroundings in order to sustain their well-being, it is important to investigate these changes as well. Archaeology, working with the natural sciences, is positioned to bring to light new understandings of the extent and scope of these impacts. An especially powerful interdisciplinary tool for better understanding how past societies skillfully shaped the world for their needs is Airborne LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging), which creates detailed terrain maps suitable for finding small, microtopographic impressions on the ground. This project uses publically available LiDAR to detect a poorly understood set of subtle archaeological features. The research program will provide key opportunities for undergraduate students to become involved directly in hands-on interdisciplinary research. The project will also collaborate with local tribal communities on using LiDAR for cultural heritage management, exploring this tool as a non-destructive and efficient approach to recording significant cultural features before potential destruction by ongoing modern development. Drs. Howey and Palace and their research team will expand on their recent work with LiDAR to study the ways past societies shaped their landscapes to help them through times of scarcity by building food storage facilities. During the period just before European Contact, called the Late Precontact period (ca. AD 1200-1600), relatively low-density hunter-gatherer and early farming societies in the northern Great Lakes region began building subterranean food storage pits called cache pits to respond to risk and uncertainty in their subsistence systems. Archaeologists first recorded small circular depressions that are remnants of cache pits over 100 years ago but the full extent of the practice of building and storing food in cache pits remains unknown. By developing and applying a cache pit detection routine to all available LiDAR data from the Michigan Statewide Authoritative Imagery & LiDAR (MiSAIL) collection program in the northern Lower Peninsula and eastern Upper Peninsula and a system of ground-truthing field surveys, the research program will produce the first-ever systematic landscape-scale record of cache pit archaeological features in the northern Great Lakes region. The results will be used to assess how communities positioned cache pits in response to the mutually interlocking social, economic, and ecological stressors of Late Precontact. The case study will contribute to the growing appreciation of the capacity of small-scale societies to shape their environment for their survival, including through complicated food storage practices.