Whose Data Is It Anyway? Lessons in Data Management and Sharing from Resurrecting and Repurposing Lidar Data for Archaeology Research in Honduras

Abstract

As a response to Hurricane Mitch and the resulting widespread loss of life and destruction of Honduran infrastructure in 1998, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) conducted the first wide-area airborne lidar topographic mapping project in Central America. The survey was executed by the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas at Austin (BEG) in 2000, and it was intended to cover 240 square kilometers distributed among 15 flood-prone communities throughout Honduras. The original data processing produced basic digital elevation models at 1.5-meter grid spacing which were used as inputs for hydrological modeling. The USGS published the results in a series of technical reports in 2002. The authors became interested in this dataset in 2013 while searching for geospatial data that would provide additional context and comparative references for an archaeological lidar project conducted in 2012 in the Honduran Mosquitia. After multiple requests to representatives from the USGS and BEG, we found various types of processed data in personal and institutional archives, culminating in the identification of 8-mm magnetic tapes that contained the original point clouds. Point clouds for the 15 communities plus a test area centered on the Maya site of Copán were recovered from the tapes (16 areas totaling 700 km²). These point clouds have been reprocessed by the authors using contemporary software and methods into higher resolution and fidelity products. Within these new products, we have identified and mapped multiple archaeological sites in proximity to modern cities, many of which are not part of the official Honduran site registry. Besides improving our understanding of ancient Honduras, our experiences dealing with issues of data management and access, ethics, and international collaboration have been informative. This paper summarizes our experiences in the hope that they will contribute to the discussion and development of best practices for handling geospatial datasets of archaeological value.

Remote Sensing and Indigenous Communities

“…Archaeologists working outside of North America have encountered this problem, particularly when acquiring aerial data from satellites not owned by the countries being studied. Such datasets are considered the legal property of the institutions that pay for the research, but an increasing number of archaeologists suggest that local communities ought to be afforded some level of "moral ownership" (e.g., Fernandez-Diaz and Cohen 2020). Providing moral ownership to local communities recognizes that remote sensing datasets are often the only way in which important aspects of cultural heritage can be accessed.…”

“…The danger of pitting NDN perspectives against remote sensing projects is heightened when archaeologists attempt to address large-scale questions about migration, cultural affinity, economic modeling, sacred landscapes, and societal structures engaged by ancestral peoples. Many of these questions are already addressed within NDN knowledge systems, and any attempts to consider them without centering existing knowledge perpetuates scientific colonialism (Nicholas and Hollowell 2010) exacerbating, longstanding tensions between opposing communities, as defined by Vine Deloria Jr. (1997).…”

“…Many have documented the empirical, methodological, and theoretical impacts of remote sensing in archaeology (e.g., Chase et al 2011;Thompson et al 2011), yet it is only recently that archaeologists considered the unique ethical challenges created when using these technologies. Remote sensing technologies create ethical challenges for many reasons, which include the fact that they (1) can be deployed without engaging local communities; (2) require significant financial investment and specialized knowledge to operate; and (3) create datasets that can be easily shared and are often given a great deal of authority, yet are difficult to manage and interpret (e.g., Cohen et al 2020). As such, inexpertly designed and poorly implemented projects can dispossess people of their cultural heritage, reinstall or amplify unequal power relations, threaten sovereignty and intellectual property rights, and otherwise alienate communities and peoples at the center of research.…”

Ethical considerations for remote sensing and open data in relation to the endangered archaeology in the Middle East and North Africa project

“…Recently, a lot of attention has been focussed on ethics in relation to big data (e.g., Howey et al, 2020;VanValkenburg & Dufton, 2020), particularly for collecting and maintaining large datasets. Specific concerns have also been raised about how archaeologists collect, use, reproduce and store LiDAR data (Cohen et al, 2020;Fernandez-Diaz et al, 2018;Fernandez-Diaz & Cohen, 2020). While these themes apply to all remote sensing datasets, the use of satellite imagery has the additional facet of not requiring physical access to an area, thereby sidestepping the necessity of a direct relationship with national and local stakeholders of the territory under investigation.…”

High‐resolution airborne Light Detection and Ranging data, ethics and archaeology: Considerations from the northeastern United States

“…Regarding LiDAR and archaeology specifically, a recent special issue of Journal of Computer Applications in Archaeology called 'Reflections on Archaeological Lidar', and previous articles by the contributing authors, examined a wide range of issues related to increasing collection and use of LiDAR data and its place within archaeological practice (Chase et al, 2020;Cohen et al, 2020;Fernandez-Diaz & Cohen, 2020;Fernandez-Diaz et al, 2018). More generally, an issue of the Journal of Field Archaeology from 2020 also provides a range of articles that examine various aspects of 'big data' in archaeology including revising our understanding of a 'site' now that regional-scale analysis is possible as well as data governance policies (Casana, 2020;Gupta et al, 2020;Howey et al, 2020;McCoy, 2020;VanValkenburgh & Dufton, 2020).…”