Hello all,
I'm keenly interested in the use of UAS technology in archaeology. I'm currently involved in a project in which we are searching for a number of 'lost' sites of European settlers who lived and worked in the Merrymeeting Bay area of Maine from the 1600s and onward. In addition to the background research that we've been conducting, we have been using airborne (piloted aircraft-borne) LiDAR survey data and GIS software to produce imagery to help locate features in the landscape that may suggest past human activity and prompt further on-site investigation. For example, LiDAR-derived "bare-earth" imagery is of particular value to us, since we are working in an area with heavy forest/vegetation cover that tends to hide many features in the terrain, and processing the LiDAR point-cloud data allows us to effectively remove most of the vegetation to yield clear images of the surface of the ground. There are many other ways in which LiDAR data can be processed and put to use in archaeology, but I won't go into those now.
That said, we have no immediate plans for drone-borne LiDAR (due to current budget constraints), although hopefully that may change in the future if we secure more funding.
In the meantime, we plan to use drone VIDEO coverage of our test and excavation sites as part of our public outreach and education efforts, as well as an adjunct to our official site reports. Video imagery should be useful in several ways. For instance, it could add visual interest to our public presentations and help generate community enthusiasm about our project, and from a professional/academic standpoint, it could help clarify certain visual characteristics of a site and the surrounding area, which might help researchers understand how those visual characteristics could have been combined with other factors in the original settler's decision-making process to build at a specific location, and so forth.
I recently acquired my Part 107 remote pilot certificate and plan to start flying very soon. We're starting out with a Mavic Air.
{I'm in the process of joining a couple of other UAS forums, so you might see a similar introduction in those if you're a member.)
I welcome any comments and feedback.
Cheers,
Blue Chips
I'm keenly interested in the use of UAS technology in archaeology. I'm currently involved in a project in which we are searching for a number of 'lost' sites of European settlers who lived and worked in the Merrymeeting Bay area of Maine from the 1600s and onward. In addition to the background research that we've been conducting, we have been using airborne (piloted aircraft-borne) LiDAR survey data and GIS software to produce imagery to help locate features in the landscape that may suggest past human activity and prompt further on-site investigation. For example, LiDAR-derived "bare-earth" imagery is of particular value to us, since we are working in an area with heavy forest/vegetation cover that tends to hide many features in the terrain, and processing the LiDAR point-cloud data allows us to effectively remove most of the vegetation to yield clear images of the surface of the ground. There are many other ways in which LiDAR data can be processed and put to use in archaeology, but I won't go into those now.
That said, we have no immediate plans for drone-borne LiDAR (due to current budget constraints), although hopefully that may change in the future if we secure more funding.
In the meantime, we plan to use drone VIDEO coverage of our test and excavation sites as part of our public outreach and education efforts, as well as an adjunct to our official site reports. Video imagery should be useful in several ways. For instance, it could add visual interest to our public presentations and help generate community enthusiasm about our project, and from a professional/academic standpoint, it could help clarify certain visual characteristics of a site and the surrounding area, which might help researchers understand how those visual characteristics could have been combined with other factors in the original settler's decision-making process to build at a specific location, and so forth.
I recently acquired my Part 107 remote pilot certificate and plan to start flying very soon. We're starting out with a Mavic Air.
{I'm in the process of joining a couple of other UAS forums, so you might see a similar introduction in those if you're a member.)
I welcome any comments and feedback.
Cheers,
Blue Chips
