Comments

• • Meaghan Peuramaki-Brown@meaghanp

  

  Meaghan Peuramaki-Brown February 3, 2018 - 3:59pm

  This is amazing data BUT the headline of the artice is misleading. All of the "sites" that were the focus of this large lidar survey are known, and have had significant research conducted at them--some over a hundred years. What it does tell us, is the extent of settlment (structures around the monumental cores), landscape modification, and infrastructure around the monumental cores and between "sites", which has always been hypothesized but could not be fully demonstrated due to dense jungle. Also, be wary of the population estimates, as it is assuming all the structures are occupied at same time--which they most certainly were not. But population estimates represent a much longer rant for me... I'm very curious to see what type of algorithm they are using on the data cloud--many are not good enough to detect structures under 1m, which will be the majority of commoner housing. These algorithms are usually applied later on.

• • Meaghan Peuramaki-Brown@meaghanp

  

  Meaghan Peuramaki-Brown February 4, 2018 - 9:01pm

  Lo and behold--blog post that came out today.

  https://publishingarchaeology.blogspot.ca/2018/02/why-i-am-skeptical-about-new-maya-lidar.html?spref=tw

  Good summary of pretty much what I said above. He left out many of the Maya articles from the 2015 Advances issue:

  1. Kathryn Reese-Taylor, Armando Anaya Hernández, F. C. Atasta Flores Esquivel, Kelly Monteleone, Alejandro Uriarte, Christopher Carr, Helga Geovannini Acuña, Juan Carlos Fernandez-Diaz, Meaghan Peuramaki-Brown, Nicholas Dunning. "Select Boots on the Ground at Yaxnohcah: Ground-Truthing Lidar in a Complex Tropical Landscape;

  2. Aline Magnoni, Travis W. Stanton, Nicolas Barth, Juan Carlos Fernandez-Diaz, José Francisco Osorio León, Francisco Pérez Ruíz, Jessica A. Wheeler. "Detection Thresholds of Archaeological Features in Airborne Lidar Data from Central Yucatán";

  3. Holley Moyes, Shane Montgomery. "Mapping Ritual Landscapes Using Lidar: Cave Detection through Local Relief Modeling";

  4. Scott R. Hutson, Barry Kidder, Céline Lamb, Daniel Vallejo-Cáliz, Jacob Welch "Small Buildings and Small Budgets: Making Lidar Work in Northern Yucatan, Mexico";

  5. Scott Macrae, Gyles Iannone. "Understanding Ancient Maya Agricultural Terrace Systems through Lidar and Hydrological Mapping"