Recent LiDAR Applications in Archaeology

Photo location.

Back in December, I received an email from a fellow park service employee at Valley Forge.

Laura,
I came across your blog through the miracles of Google and was interested to see that you're a NPS-type too. I'm the GIS person at Valley Forge and I've been asked by my supervisor to research the possibilities of having LiDAR flown for the park to map our archaeological resources. Do you have any suggestions about how to go about this? I've seen that it's been done in the UK a lot and I checked out the links in your blog, but I'm not sure that either of those companies would be of much help given their distance from Philadelphia. I will contact them and see if they have any hints, but I thought I'd ask you as well.
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I definitely have a keen interest in the archaeological applications of LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) as well as other applications in geophysical survey since studying Magnetometry and conducting magnetic survey with the park service at Hopewell Mound Group in Chillicothe, Ohio, but I don't exactly know the answer yet to help the folks out at Valley Forge.

So what is LiDAR?
Definition: Lidar is a type of aircraft-based remote sensing, using laser-driven pulses of light and multispectral cameras to scan and process digital information about a landscape. Used originally to map environments, lidar has been of demonstrable use in archaeological survey and mapping of monuments.

I have no doubt that Valley Forge will figure things out because LiDAR is gaining momentum in archaeology (esp. in the UK; Archaeoptics.), but the application still has a long way to go here in the states, where it is primarily being used to conduct highway surveys and other civil services, like here in Ohio. It is here in Ohio where the little guy scrapes by to perform pedestrian geophysical survey in order to find archaeological sites, a much slower process (thanks Jarrod!!).

So, while at the OSU Library the other day, I browsed through one of the latest issues of Antiquity (Volume: 79 Number: 305 Page: 636-647 ) and found this:
New light on an ancient landscape: lidar survey in the Stonehenge World Heritage Site

And then I found this write-up online:
Stonehenge Laser Scans
The landscape around Stonehenge is rich in archaeological sites of all periods, hundreds of them, including barrows and cursuses from prehistoric times, Romano-British camps, medieval field-systems and more recently the railways and the remains of the Stonehenge Aerodrome including some hangar footings, testament to continued use and re-use of the space. It is due to the internationally recognised importance of this archaeological landscape that UNESCO have designated the area a World Heritage Site.

I believe that because of the success of using LiDAR at this famous site, we are going to start seeing more wide-spread use in archaeology. I'll try and keep everyone posted and Valley Forge, keep me posted!