Into the light: how lidar is replacing radar as the archaeologist’s map tool of choice
by Guy Gugliotta for the Washington Post from on (#BWS0)
A technology using rapid pulses of light is helping archaeologists to chart ancient settlements hidden beneath dense forest canopies
Colorado State University archaeologist Chris Fisher found out about lidar in 2009. He was surveying the ruins of Angamuco in west-central Mexico the traditional way, with a line of grad students and assistants walking carefully while looking at the ground for bits of ceramics, the remains of an old foundation or even a tomb.
He had expected to find a settlement, but instead he happened upon a major city of the Purepecha empire, rivals of the Aztecs in the centuries immediately preceding the Spanish conquest of Mexico in 1519.
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