Aerial lidar (light detection and ranging) has been hailed as a revolutionary technology in archaeological survey because it can map vast areas with high-precision and seemingly peer beneath forest cover. This excitement has led to a proliferation of lidar scans, including calls to map the entire land surface of earth. Highlighting how the growth of aerial lidar is tied to fast capitalism, this article seeks to temporarily pause the global rush for data collection/extraction by focusing on the ethical dilemmas of remotely scanning Indigenous homelands and heritage. Although lidar specialists must obtain federal permissions for their work, few engage with people directly in the path of their scans or descendant stakeholders. This oversight perpetuates colonial oppression by objectifying Indigenous descendants. To address Indigenous objectification, I argue that aerial lidar mapping should be preceded by a concerted, culturally sensitive effort to obtain informed consent from local and descendant groups. With the Mensabak Archaeological Project as a case study, I demonstrate how aerial lidar can become part of a collaborative, humanizing praxis.

Following the identification of more than 600 suspected house platforms on aerial survey data from Brusselstown Ring hillfort, four test excavations revealed evidence of Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age occupation, positioning the site as the largest nucleated settlement so far identified in prehistoric Ireland and Britain.

The June 2016 extratropical cyclone with anomalous ENE storm wave direction caused widespread beach-foredune erosion in southeastern Australia. At Bengello Beach, erosion volumes were 97–108 m3/m for the central and southern parts of the beach, while the northern end only lost 18 m3/m of sand. In the central and southern parts of the embayment, a surf zone bar formed 50–100 m further seaward than is typical for this beach and was a temporary store of sand eroded from the beach-foredune. A nearshore wave model showed substantial variability in wave power along the 10 m depth contour and explained the partial sheltering of the northern end of the embayment from storm impact. An embayment-wide time-series of airborne LiDAR further emphasised the alongshore variability in beach-foredune erosion. The wide beach and broad, double-crested, well-vegetated foredune along much of the embayment was pivotal in protecting the shoreline. In the centre and south of the beach, recovery took nearly three years and although complete by volume, the foredune was narrower and less resilient. The results emphasise the role of wide beaches and natural vegetated foredunes in buffering extreme storms and suggest foredune rehabilitation should be a key management priority for sustainable coasts.

Mountains figure prominently in Mesoamerican cosmogeny, and a deep history of pilgrimage and worship surrounds many, though few have been systematically investigated using modern archaeological methods. Here, the authors present results from the lidar mapping and surface survey of a plateau at the summit of Cerro Patlachique, located at the southern limit of the Teotihuacan Valley, Mexico. While ceramic typology establishes Cerro Patlachique as a site of pilgrimage before, during and after the occupation of Teotihuacan, the documentation of 34 carved monuments substantially expands the existing corpus and identifies the summit as a place of convocation with water deities.

Quarries are information-rich anthropic landscapes, but their unique characteristics often limit the effectiveness of traditional archaeological documentation strategies. Here, the authors present a novel interdisciplinary method for the documentation and analysis of these landscapes, focusing on two ancient marble quarries on the Mediterranean island of Naxos. The workflow, combining lidar, photogrammetry, sculptural and architectural study, geoscience, ecological study and archaeological survey, provides a means for the systematic documentation of quarry landscapes in the Mediterranean and beyond, and aims to promote an understanding of premodern extractive activities not as isolated occurrences but as important aspects of interconnected, evolving landscapes.

A 103 km2 aerial lidar survey of Dzibanche/Kaanu’l, Mexico, reveals the city’s settlement to be more populous and well-organized than previously thought. The sprawling settlement incorporated the early center of Ichkabal in a network of smaller peri-urban civic-ceremonial nodes. The density and complexity of the Kaanu’l settlement is consistent with its extraordinary political reach as a multiregional hegemonic state. The city and settlement grew to their maximum extent during the Early Classic period until AD 630. The lidar-derived data show that Dzibanche may have had the largest monumental zone and highest population density in the Maya Lowlands at that time. The Early Classic layout was unaltered by later construction, allowing us to document a well-developed system of causeways connecting an urban center and peripheral plaza groups with surrounding settlements and agricultural fields. The spatial organization and interconnectedness of this Early Classic settlement suggests a greater level of urban planning for optimal flow of goods and people across urban and peri-urban zones than previously thought.

Simultaneous localization and mapping technology is the basis for multi-robot systems to complete navigation, path planning, and autonomous exploration in complex, dynamic, and Global Positioning System (GPS)-denied environments. This paper reviews the current status and progress of multi-robot simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) technology based on LiDAR. First, this paper studies the basic principles of LiDAR SLAM. It analyzes the system model construction of LiDAR SLAM, including the mobile robot coordinate system model, kinematic model, sensor model, map presentation, LiDAR SLAM framework, and classic algorithms. Then, this paper discusses the basic framework of collaborative SLAM, analyzes the key issues such as data association, loop closure detection, and global graph optimization in collaborative SLAM, and conducts a detailed literature review on the solutions to key problems in sub-fields of multi-robot SLAM such as frontier detection, task allocation, map fusion, and compares the advantages and disadvantages of various algorithms. Finally, this paper outlines the challenges and future research directions of multi-robot LiDAR SLAM.

The logistics, costs, and capacity needed to complete extensive archaeological pedestrian surveys to inventory cultural resources present challenges to public land managers. To address these issues, we developed a workflow combining lidar-derived imagery and deep learning (DL) models tailored for cultural resource management (CRM) programs on public lands. It combines Python scripts that fine-tune models to recognize archaeological features in lidar-derived imagery with denoising QGIS steps that improve the predictions’ performance and applicability. We present this workflow through an applied case study focused on detecting historic agricultural terraces in the Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge, Georgia, USA. For this project, we fine-tuned pretrained U-Net models to teach them to recognize agricultural terraces in imagery, identified the parameter settings that led to the highest recall for detecting terraces, and used those settings to train models on incremental dataset sizes, which allowed us to identify the minimum training size necessary to obtain satisfying models. Results present effective models that can detect most terraces even when trained on small datasets. This study provides a robust methodology that requires basic proficiencies in Python coding but expands DL applications in federal CRM by advancing methods in lidar and machine learning for archaeological inventorying, monitoring, and preservation.

Monumental roads were constructed during the ninth to thirteenth centuries by the regional society centred on Chaco Canyon in the US Southwest. Here, the authors present new lidar and field documentation of parallel roads at the Gasco Site, which sits within a ritual landscape south of Chaco Canyon. Their findings reveal that the Gasco Road is substantially longer than previously believed and forms alignments between natural springs and towards the winter solstice sunrise over Mount Taylor, a mountain sacred among contemporary Indigenous peoples. These findings highlight the agency of landscapes and skyscapes in structuring ritual practices in ancient societies worldwide.

Recent archaeological and remote sensing research in the Maya Lowlands has demonstrated evidence for extensive modification of the landscape in the forms of channeled fields and upland terraces. Scholars often assume these measures were taken primarily to intensify maize production; however, paleoethnobotany highlights a greater diversity of crops grown by the precolonial Maya. This study combines the growth requirements of 18 crops cultivated by ancient Maya farmers with lidar and other geospatial data in a suitability model that maps optimal areas for growth. These 18 crops cluster into five groups of crops with similar growth requirements. Across the study region, different groupings of crops had different suitability in and around different ancient Maya centers and agricultural features. This spatial variation in suitability reflects the heterogeneity of land resources and adaptations and contributes to existing conversations about economic and settlement organization in the study area. The results of this study serve as a foundation for future field studies and more complex spatial models.

In the context of the ongoing biodiversity crisis, understanding forest ecosystems, their tree species composition, and especially the successional stages of their development is crucial. They collectively shape the biodiversity within forests and thereby influence the ecosystem services that forests provide, yet this information is not readily available on a large scale. Remote sensing techniques offer promising solutions for obtaining area-wide information on tree species composition and their successional stages. While optical data are often freely available in appropriate quality over large scales, obtaining light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data, which provide valuable information about forest structure, is more challenging. LiDAR data are mostly acquired by public authorities across several years and therefore heterogeneous in quality. This study aims to assess if heterogeneous LiDAR data can support area-wide modeling of forest successional stages at the tree species group level. Different combinations of spectral satellite data (Sentinel-2) and heterogeneous airborne LiDAR data, collected by the federal government of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, were utilized to model up to three different successional stages of seven tree species groups. When incorporating heterogeneous LiDAR data into random forest models with spatial variable selection and spatial cross-validation, significant accuracy improvements of up to 0.23 were observed. This study shows the potential of not dismissing initially seemingly unusable heterogeneous LiDAR data for ecological studies. We advocate for a thorough examination to determine its usefulness for model enhancement. A practical application of this approach is demonstrated, in the context of mapping successional stages of tree species groups at a regional level.

The site of Guiengola is an example of one of the settlements built by the Zapotecs during their fourteenth- to fifteenth-century migration to the Southern Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Although Guiengola is well known in the ethnohistorical record as being the place where the Mexica armies were defeated by Zapotec forces during the late fifteenth century, the full extension of the site was previously unknown. Despite evidence of a dense population at the site, it has been mistakenly characterized as a fortress for housing soldiers and troops from the nearby town of Tehuantepec. Here, I present the research of the Guiengola Archeological Project, which conducted a lidar scan and archaeological surveys between 2018 and 2023. In this article, I share a comprehensive map of Guiengola, a Postclassic Mesoamerican city. My analysis identifies a large settlement that covered 360 ha and included a walled system of fortifications, an internal road network, and a hierarchically organized city. The findings of this project expand our understanding of the variations and social divisions in the city's internal urban organization, which in turn, allow us to deepen our comprehension of the transition to the Early Colonial barrio organization of Tehuantepec.

The Dorchester Aqueduct, located to the north-west of Dorchester (Durnovaria) in Dorset, is arguably the most famous and well-examined Roman watercourse in Britain. The aqueduct has been intermittently investigated over the course of the last 100 years, but most extensively during the 1990s. The upper stretches of the aqueduct and its source have, however, eluded archaeologists, with multiple routes and water sources being suggested. A new programme of geophysical and topographic survey, combined with targeted investigation together with a reappraisal of the excavations from the 1990s, has provided additional evidence for the route of the aqueduct, extending its course for a further two kilometres to Notton on the River Frome.

The Kaanuˀl dynasty ruled a hegemonic state with political influence over much of the Classic Maya Lowlands between a.d. 520 and 751. The present article introduces the subject for a special section of the journal, which refocuses attention on the archaeological zone of Dzibanche in southern Quintana Roo, Mexico, where new data are emerging about the origins of the Kaanuˀl dynasty, its urban organization, and its connections to neighboring centers. In this article, we present new data from a recent lidar survey as well as from previous work by Enrique Nalda's Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH) project to reevaluate Dzibanche's characteristics vis-à-vis its rise as a kingdom with far-reaching political influence. We complement these archaeological data with epigraphic information from new monuments and reanalysis of existing ones based on 3D scanning to update the list of Dzibanche rulers. We then revisit the chronology of Dzibanche's royal burials proposing correlations with known Early Classic Kaanuˀl rulers. Overall, the contributions to this special section present new perspectives on the Kaanuˀl's rise to power and its relationship with distant vassals in the crucial period of expansion into northern Peten, leading to the defeat of Tikal and eventually to its transition to a new dynastic seat at Calakmul in the a.d. 630s.

As airborne lidar surveys reveal a growing sample of urbanised tropical landscapes, questions linger about the sampling bias of such research leading to inflated estimates of urban extent and population magnitude. ‘Found’ datasets from remote sensing conducted for non-archaeological purposes and thus not subject to archaeological site bias, provide an opportunity to address these concerns through pseudorandom sampling. Here, the authors present their analysis of an environmental lidar dataset from Campeche, Mexico, which reveals previously unrecorded urbanism and dense regional-scale settlement. Both characteristics, the authors argue, are therefore demonstrably ubiquitous across the central Maya Lowlands.

At the turn of the twentieth century, American logging companies backed by the US colonial regime initiated extensive extraction in Bikol, Philippines. Industrial infrastructure and the involvement of a newly assembled Bikolano workforce left a profound imprint on the region's landscape. This article discusses a collaborative archaeological project that used archival materials, place-name analysis, ethnographic interviews, discussions with local scholars, satellite mapping, and drone-mounted lidar scans of former industrial sites. Findings shed light on the enduring ramifications of American logging in the early 1900s on settlement patterns, the infrastructure of routes and mobility, the state of industries from Philippine independence in 1946 through the 1980s, and ongoing environmental hazards. These findings emphasize the legacy of American empire, reveal the role of Filipino logging workers in shaping the landscape through settlement decisions, and uncover intricate connections across a pan-Pacific American colonial frontier that was shaped by both extractive and settler colonialism. This article adds to an emerging trend in Americanist archaeology in which archaeology investigates recent historical and even contemporary events.

Clusters of Neolithic cursus monuments are attested in several parts of Britain but have so far not been recorded in Ireland, where only isolated or pairs of monuments are known. A recent lidar survey of the Baltinglass landscape of County Wicklow, Ireland, has now identified a cluster of up to five cursus monuments. Here, the author explores this group of monuments and their significance within the wider setting of Neolithic Ireland and Britain. Their unique morphology, location and orientation offer insights into the ritual and ceremonial aspects of the farming communities that inhabited the Baltinglass landscape and hint at the variability in the form and possible functions of these monuments for early farming communities.

This study identifies the reasons for geodynamics variability of the coastal system within two cliff-shore sections of the southern Baltic Sea (SBS). The comparative analysis included distinct moraines and their foregrounds near the open sea (S1) and within the Gulf of Gdańsk (S2). Short-term trends indicate a direct link between landslide occurrence and increased cliff retreat. Long-term (total) values were obtained by developing the 4F MODEL for large-scale applications, based on the analysis of remote sensing and hydroacoustic data (to determine the extent of shore platforms), the modelling of higher-order polynomial functions describing their extent, followed by the integral calculus of the indicated functions within the open-source Desmos environment. The retreat dynamics for individual landslides (S1) was an order of magnitude higher (m/yr) than the average for the whole cliff section (0.17 ± 0.008 m/yr), which correlates well with medium- and long-term development tendencies and recession dynamics, revealed by the numerical modelling method, since approximately 8 ka b2k, years before 2000 CE (at S1 = 0.17 ± 0.020 m/yr, at S2 = 0.11 ± 0.005 m/yr). While the approach described in this paper can reveal, project, and simulate the dynamics of past and future trends within other cliffed coasts shaped in tideless conditions, it also proves stable moraine erosional responses to sea-level rise since the Mid-Holocene.

Durable architecture is a hallmark of Polynesian chiefdoms, associated with centralised control of residential and agricultural land. Previous work in West Polynesia has indicated a relatively late date for the onset of such construction activity—after AD 1000—suggesting that political development was influenced by events such as post-colonisation migration. The authors report new dating evidence from the excavation of a large earth mound on the island of Tongatapu. Its construction 1500 years ago indicates that, in contrast to previous findings, well-developed chiefdoms and field monuments probably dominated the landscapes of West Polynesia substantially prior to the colonisation of more easterly island nations.