On Thursday, October 26, Associate Professor of Anthropology Dr. Ken Seligson visited Reed to present a lecture titled “The Big Reveal: Airborne Laser Scanning and Archaeology in the Northern Maya Lowlands.” In it, Seligson went over the usage of LIDAR (Light, Detection, And Ranging) know-how at his web site within the state of Yucatán, positioned in southern Mexico. He argues that this know-how challenges established archaeological fashions, affords insights into sociopolitical, financial, useful resource administration practices, and permits for our focus to shift to smaller websites and extra rural areas. Finally, Seligson emphasizes that LIDAR know-how is simply a place to begin in archaeology.

Dr. Seligson started with a broader context of Mayan civilization, a historical past spanning hundreds of years and categorized into smaller time intervals with a common scholarly emphasis on the classical interval (150-950 CE). To put the Mayan classical interval in a world context, the Roman empire fell, the Dark Ages started, Islam unfold, and the primary settlers got here to Hawai’i throughout this timespan. The local weather of the panorama can also be noteworthy because it incorporates many particular person ecosystems—with the close by Chicxulub Crater creating its personal micro-ecosystem—with various entry to water and precipitation, which affect human inhabitants motion and patterns.

The focus of Dr. Seligon’s lecture was LIDAR, a pulsed laser that sends out radar factors to digitally map the panorama. On a airplane or a drone, LIDAR collects factors bouncing largely off of the tree cover, however just a few hit the forest flooring. By eradicating this cover layer, it’s potential to chart out the options of the panorama and reveal archaeological options hidden within the forests.

“We have LIDAR now—that’s changing everything,” mentioned Dr. Seligson, exhibiting pictures of digitally cleared forests revealing lengthy platforms, monumental constructions, historic roads, reservoirs, and extra. It can also be potential to determine clusters of buildings, neighborhoods, interconnected websites, and extra clearly monitor settlement patterns. 

“In the last five to 10 years we’ve had to rethink everything we thought about population levels and human-environmental relationships,” continued Dr. Seligson. With extra settlements and constructions simply mapped out over giant stretches, there’s much more out there info for inhabitants estimates. “We used to think maybe a million people were living in northern Guatemala 1,000-1,200 years ago. We’ve upped that estimate, possibly to 7-11 million people.” LIDAR can’t go beneath the floor, so it’s solely potential that there are much more constructions hidden.

LIDAR may assist determine socio-political change by figuring out early civic complexes and sure buildings with distinctive shapes and evaluating them to constructions from different time intervals. “For instance,” Seligson defined, “a few years back—even before LIDAR came on the scene—my colleagues identified this type of ritual complex or socio-political complex that they called the Early Puuc Civic Complex. Most of them appear to have been constructed between 550 and 650 CE. That’s when the Puuc was being repopulated after a long period of low population levels. And you see them at all these sites on the LIDAR.” 

Dr. Seligson additionally described how LIDAR can present water administration methods and their transformation over time. Through LIDAR, Dr. Seligson was in a position to observe an historic highway bending round a reservoir. These reservoirs — or aguadas — have been vital for having water in the course of the dry season and are sometimes related to the preclassical interval. By comparability, chultuns got here into use in the course of the classical interval. These are smaller holes within the floor which can be lined with limestone to assist retailer water. In addition to the communal reservoirs, there are actually extra private family chultuns (sometimes 1-3 chultuns per home). And regardless of the small measurement of the outlet — about half a meter in diameter — LIDAR continues to be in a position to decide it up. 

After offering this overview of LIDAR’s capabilities, Dr. Seligson introduced findings from two of his websites — Paso del Macho and Xanab Chak. LIDAR on the whole helps determine smaller websites like these that will have in any other case been missed or ignored. From Paso del Macho, Dr. Seligson and his group discovered a ritual deposit of 17 jade pendants in a turtle-adorned ceramic vessel, which was buried earlier than the development of the settlement, presumably a ritualistic funding on behalf of the inhabitants. Dr. Seligson additionally confirmed a novel figurine present in Xanab Chak. “It is not supposed to be there,” he remarked. The vexing figurine is from a unique area and time interval than the context during which it was discovered, and there are only some imprecise similarities with different recognized collectible figurines. “Honestly, if anyone has any ideas, I’m looking forward to hearing what you got for me,” mentioned Dr. Seligson. 

Dr. Seligson additionally briefly talked about moral considerations of LIDAR know-how, and when requested to additional elaborate, he defined that “one of the main ethical questions related to LIDAR is, who is actually approving the LIDAR flyovers? We apply for a permit from the Mexican government — from the state government — and they’re the ones saying ‘yeah, you can fly over this big area’ where people are living today. They [the people] are not the ones necessarily giving us permission — we’re not going door to door getting permission.”

While this subject of consent and privateness is the first moral query to Dr. Seligson, there are additionally considerations about publishing delicate location info that will put these websites susceptible to looting or different harmful actions. Dr. Seligson defined that eradicating any recognizable reference factors and coordinates helps mitigate this subject. Even so, within the subject of archaeology, the looters continuously get to those websites first.

Dr. Seligson concludes his lecture by explaining his guide, The Maya and Climate Change, which makes an attempt to clarify the intricate causes behind the Mayan civilization collapse and humankind’s relationship with the local weather. To Dr. Seligson, LIDAR has remodeled the preliminary survey strategy and affords a promising future in archaeology.