Archaeology And Laser Technology

Archaeology And Laser Technology

The ancient city of Caracol, Belize in the present, is the first archaeological site uncovered by the use of LIDAR, a laser pulse instrument developed by NASA, already used in geology and seismology.

Arlen and Diane Chase had taken twenty-five years to get off the vegetation and create a map, albeit detailed, twenty-three square miles of Caracol, an ancient Mayan city in the territory of Belize and to the ages entirely covered by jungle. But to finish the work the two U.S. archaeologists are enough just twenty four hours. On an intuition that will probably school in archeology. The Chase have in fact applied laser equipment developed by NASA and called LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) to a helicopter and flew over this two hundred square kilometers, we now know to be the whole archaeological complex. By mapping in three dimensions have emerged a road system consists of dozens of paved roads, thousands of new structures, plots and agricultural terraces.

This is a groundbreaking technology for this field. This allows the removal of rain forests without removing the rain forests! If more widely deployed this should discover more and more ancient civilizations in a non-destructive format. We'll see where this takes the field of archaeology

Great technology!!
S&F!
At last some non destructive archaeology!

It's very cool technology. Some folk seem to think archaeology is like an exercise in opinion. Sometimes it is, I guess. Behind the headlines, there's plenty of hardcore science and cutting edge testing going on.

LIDAR has been used here in England for a few years. IIRC it's been used at Stonehenge about 6 or 7 years back. After all these years, maybe it's just about become affordable or accessible? I don't know. Good thread