Journal
JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL SCIENCE-REPORTS
Volume 21, Issue -, Pages 450-459Publisher
ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.jasrep.2018.08.016
Keywords
Drone; UAV; Remote sensing; Thermography; Aerial photography; Late prehistoric; American Midwest
Categories
Funding
- National Endowment for the Humanities' Office of Digital Humanities Digital Advancement Grant, United States [HAA-256086-17]
- Passport in Time program
- Forest Service, USDA
- National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) [HAA-256086-17] Funding Source: National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)
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Locating the subtle and uneven deposition of human activities across the landscape continues to challenge archaeologists. Existing tools (e.g. excavation, shovel testing, pedestrian survey, and terrestrial geophysics) have proven effective at locating many types of archaeological features but remain time-consuming and difficult to undertake on densely vegetated or topographically complex terrain. As a result of these limitations, key aspects of past communities remain largely outside of archaeological detection and interpretation. This flattening of past lifeways not only affects broader understandings of these communities, but can also negatively impact the preservation of archaeological sites. This paper presents the detection of archaeological features through an analysis of drone-acquired thermal, multispectral, and visible light imagery, alongside historical aerial photography, in the area surrounding Middle Grant Creek (11WI2739), a late prehistoric village located at Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie in Will County, IL. Our investigations discovered a probable housing area and a ritual enclosure, increasing the area of the site from 3.4 ha to 20 ha. The proposed housing and ritual areas of this village also help contextualize finds from the ongoing archaeological excavations at Middle Grant Creek. More broadly, results demonstrate the valuable contributions that these relatively new archaeological survey methods have in shaping our understandings of the archaeological landscape and highlight the importance of integrating them into the archaeological toolkit.
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