Progression and Issues in the Mesoamerican Geospatial Revolution

Abstract

The use of airborne mapping lidar (Light Detection and Ranging), a.k.a airborne laser scanning (ALS), has had a major impact on archaeological research being carried out in Mesoamerica. Since being introduced in 2009, mapping lidar has revolutionized the spatial parameters of Mesoamerican, and especially Maya, archaeology by permitting the recovery of a complete landscape and settlement pattern for further analysis. However, like any new technology, there are learning curves to be overcome, resulting in a feedback relationship between the on-the-ground archaeologists, the virtually grounded computer analysts, and the instrument designers. Archaeologists have been able to identify problems and issues with data production and visualization for the determination of archaeological remains caused by vegetation, special terrain conditions, and modern disturbance. The identification of these concerns helps the technician to develop new techniques, especially when working in conjunction with the field researcher. As seen through the papers in this volume, this symbiotic relationship promises to yield both new breakthroughs in landscape and settlement analysis for Mesoamerican archaeology and enhanced analytic and visualization techniques for lidar with the potential for applicability in other contexts. In many regards, the development of lidar has parallels to the development of radiocarbon dating as a revolutionary technology.

Testing Web Mapping and Active Learning to Approach Lidar Data

“…A variety of applications and methods-oriented publications have been presented over the past decade to approach these problems (e.g., Chase et al 2016; Evans et al 2013; Guyot et al 2018; Henry et al 2019; Opitz et al 2015; Quintus et al 2015), and multiple approaches (or combinations of approaches) are adopted by specialists today. Regarding the desk-based analysis of lidar information, the common approach involves the interpretation of digital elevation models (DEMs) produced from the lidar raw data (initially point clouds) using a series of possible visualizations (e.g., Chase and Weishampel 2016; Ebert et al 2016).…”

Big Archaeology: Horizons and Blindspots

“…Indeed, should archaeologists be the only people making these decisions in the first place? While previous scholars have warned that publishing data on site locations may unwittingly facilitate their destruction (Chase et al 2016; Fernandez-Diaz et al 2018; Parcak 2007), we have given little consideration to the perhaps even more difficult question of whether property rights to imagery should be mediated by laws that govern the people, places, and things that appear in them. Or, to put a new spin on a question that haunts modernist archaeology, who owns these images of "the past," if not also the data that we extract from them?…”

Ethics in Archaeological Lidar

“…Approximately ten years ago, other parts of the world began to catch up with their European colleagues. In Mexico and Central America, lidar scans are changing the way that we think about urbanism, population sizes, and settlement patterns (Canuto et al 2018;Chase et al 2011Chase et al , 2016Fernandez-Diaz et al 2018;Fisher et al 2016Fisher et al , 2017Garrison, Houston and Alcover Firpi 2019;Hare, Masson and Russell 2014;Inomata et al 2018). In South America, lidar data have the potential to transform the way that we think about and preserve vast areas of the Amazon Basin (Iriarte et al, in prep;Khan, Aragão and Iriarte 2017;Stenborg, Schaan and Figueiredo 2018).…”