Remote Sensing of Chaco Roads Revisited

Abstract

This paper reports on the first and highly effective use of Light Detection and Ranging (lidar) technology to document Chaco roads, monumental linear surface constructions of the precolumbian culture that occupied the Four Corners region of the American Southwest between approximately AD 600 and 1300. Analysis of aerial photographs supplemented by ground survey has been the traditional methodology employed to identify Chaco roads, but their traces have become increasingly subtle and difficult to detect in recent years due to the impacts of natural weathering, erosion, and land development. Roads that were easily visible in aerial photography and on the ground in the 1980s are now virtually invisible, underscoring the need for new, cutting-edge techniques to detect and document them. Using three case studies of the Aztec Airport Mesa Road, the Great North Road, and the Pueblo Alto Landscape, we demonstrate lidar's unprecedented ability to document known Chaco roads, discover previously undetected road segments, and produce a precise quantitative record of these rapidly vanishing features.

Evidence for human‐caused founder effect in populations ofSolanum jamesiifound at archaeological sites: I. Breeding experiments and the geography of sexual reproduction

“…Why would some archaeological populations be able to produce fruit and others not? Those that do produce fruit are positioned along well‐known trade and pilgrimage routes, extending from the Rio Grande Valley, through the Mogollon Rim to Chaco and beyond to Mesa Verde and the San Juan Basin (Colton, 1941 ; Malville and Malville, 2001 ; Hull et al, 2014 ; Friedman et al, 2017 ). Salt, ceramics, shells, turquoise, obsidian, cacao, and scarlet macaws are among the valuable and exotic goods that moved through the extensive Chacoan (pre‐Chacoan?)…”

Lidar-Derived Road Profiles

“…There are at least several hundred kilometers of Chaco roads, of which only a small number have been studied on the ground (Kincaid et al 1983). Furthermore, many roads are degrading as a result of modern land practices (Friedman et al 2017;Heitman and Field 2021). Consequently, rapid, effective methods for studying Chaco roads from both ground-and aerial-based perspectives are needed.…”

Developing FAIR Ontological Pathways: Linking Evidence of Movement in Lidar to Models of Human Behaviour

“…Having sketched our conceptual framework, we can consider the elements that are treated as observational data within studies of movement. Physical paths, of the types produced by the first kind of movement defined above, are frequently identified in surveys and landscape studied based on interpretation of LDTMs (e.g., Chase et al 2011;Vletter 2014;Friedman, Sofaer & Weiner 2017;Verbrugghe, De Clercq & Van Eetvelde 2017). At a basic level, these observational datasets are prone to several widely recognized problems, broadly related to chronological uncertainty, bias based on observer background and experience, and the vagaries of topographic preservation (Ainsworth, Oswald & Went 2013;Fernandez-Diaz et al 2014;Fruchart 2016;Small 2016).…”

“…Starting from various case studies from medieval France (Leturcq 2008), the Ancestral Pueblo in the southwest of the United States (Friedman, Sofaer & Weiner 2017) and the Maya world in Belize (Chase & Chase 2001;Chase et al 2011), we have experimented with this approach in multiple workshops with diverse participants, including experienced and novice lidar users, students, academic researchers, and heritage managers. Tools, ranging from pen and paper or post-it notes to spreadsheet forms and schema modelling software (like the UML software package yEd; https://www.yworks.com/products/yed), can be used in the exercise of collective ontology development.…”