Small Buildings and Small Budgets

Abstract

Despite the success of lidar in making ancient features visible in certain tropical environments, researchers often have difficulty using lidar to identify small, low, non-linear features. This study juxtaposes lidar data with data gathered from pedestrian survey along the Ucí-Cansahcab causeway, located in the Northern Maya lowlands, to assess the degree to which the invisibility of small buildings in lidar imagery affects demographic research. The juxtaposition shows that demographic research with lidar can move forward in some cases once pedestrian survey has been used as a baseline to establish correction factors for using lidar data on their own. Another current barrier to the use of lidar is cost. This paper provides examples of the kinds of questions that can be addressed by projects with smaller budgets and, therefore, smaller amounts of lidar coverage. These questions include site size comparisons and the degree to which settlement clustered around ancient features such as the Ucí-Cansahcab causeway.

Detecting Classic Maya Settlements with Lidar-Derived Relief Visualizations

“…In Western Belize, 27% (4 of 15) mapped residential structures were identified on the lidar hillshade and TPI raster [42]. In the Northern Yucatan, 47% of mapped buildings were visible on the lidar between Ucí and Cansahcab, and at Ucanha, 48% of architectural features were visible [7].…”

“…For nearly a century, remote sensing has been used for archaeological prospection to locate otherwise hidden features and better understand past human-landscape interactions. While advances in higher quality and more easily accessible remote-sensing data have drastically increased our ability to conduct archaeological prospection [1][2][3][4][5], they also highlight how landscapes, vegetation, and visualization tools directly impact our ability to detect small archaeological features [6][7][8][9][10]. Particularly in the past two decades, novel technologies such as Light Detection and Ranging (lidar) revolutionized the use of remote sensing for archaeological prospection.…”

Virtual cultural landscapes: Geospatial visualizations of past environments

“…Approximately 40% of plazuelas documented through pedestrian surveys were remotely identified (Thompson, 2020), and building platforms (structures) were often most visible in lidar point clouds (Prufer et al, 2015). The challenges of remotely identifying house mounds have been documented across the Maya region (Hutson et al, 2016;Magnoni et al, 2016;Yaeger et al, 2016).…”

Defining Rurality at La Joyanca (Peten, Guatemala): Architecture, Land Use, and Social Dynamics

“…Many studies conducted after the 1970s intersite surveys and before the quite recent analyses based on Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) captures (Beach et al 2019;Canuto et al 2018;Garrison et al 2019;Ruhl et al 2018) suggest the existence of urban/rural relationships that outreached economic activities, i.e., food production and redistribution of goods. For example, some recent works identify discrete settlements that would have been linked by sacbes and/or collective spaces, and discuss the role of these built infrastructures as a way of defining site boundaries, sociopolitical dynamics, and symbolic relationships (Hutson et al 2016;Nondédéo et al 2022;Stanton et al 2019). The detailed study of architecture and material artifacts is also helpful in enlightening the nature of urban/rural relationships (Hutson et al 2008(Hutson et al , 2009, even adjusting and rethinking the notion of urban/rural limits.…”

“…As detailed in this article, the datasets that have been assembled during both projects on settlement, land use pattern, architecture, and population mobility are nevertheless sufficient to explore the issue of the relationships between the center of La Joyanca and its hinterland. We would document the way the first three parameters introduce and determine the fourth (mobility), which has basically to do with not only the attraction of cities, but also a more complex capacity of "bottom-up" agency of commoners (Hutson 2016;Inomata 2004;Marken and Arnauld 2022).…”