Estrela Do Norte News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Case Study Geometry by Design: Contribution of Lidar to the Understanding of Settlement Patterns of the Mound Villages in SW Amazonia Authors: Abstract Recent research has shown that the entire southern rim of Amazonia was inhabited by earth-building societies involving landscape engineering, landscape domestication and likely low-density urbanism during the Late Holocene. However, the scale, timing, and intensity of human settlement in this region remain unknown due to the dearth of archaeological work and the logistical difficulties associated with research in tropical forest environments. ...

Detail of a circular mound village called Dona Maria with ‘twin’ village. Image credit: Iriarte et al., doi: 10.5334/jcaa.45. “Lidar provides a new opportunity to locate and document earthen sites in forested parts of Amazonia characterized by dense vegetation,” said Professor Jose Iriarte, an archaeologist and archaeobotanist at the University of Exeter. “It can also document the smallest surficial earthen features in the recently opened pasture areas.” Professor Iriarte and his colleagues used a lidar sensor integrated into an MD 500 helicopter to document architectural feature...