An article on BBC news today reveals that further details have emerged of the nature of a "lost village" discovered during
water main works on the outskirts of Selkirk. The stones, cobbles and artefacts unearthed are thought to date from between the 14th and 16th Centuries. They were found during a Scottish Water project to lay a new water main.
Initial studies in late 2012 suggested the findings may have been related to an Anglo-Saxon settlement but it now appears to date from a later period. Investigations by Guard Archaeology uncovered the foundations of stone-built structures, cobbled farmyards and the foundations of walls, buildings and hearths. Artefacts included a decorated stone spindle whorl, medieval pottery and pivot stones, thought to have been used as a hinge for doors on buildings.
This discovery was indeed a happy accident that offers great insight into medieval Scotland but what technologies are available for finding habitations deemed "lost"?
'LiDAR-aided reconnaissance and reconstruction of lost landscapes: An example of freshwater shell mounds (ca. 7500–500 CAL B.P.) in northeastern Florida' published in a recent issue of Journal of Field Archaeology explores LiDAR datasets from which "high-resolution topographic maps can be generated" and "are becoming commonplace in archaeological analyses".
"Like any remote sensing technique, LiDAR records only a limited range of phenomena and the data are a snapshot of ground conditions at the time of collection. The temporally specific nature of LiDAR is problematic at sites with postdepositional destruction. This paper presents a method for identifying and recovering lost landscapes by combining LiDAR, archival aerial photographs, historical observations, and fieldwork.
This method was developed to reconstruct thetopography of ancient shell mounds constructed by hunter-gatherers on the St. Johns River in northeastern Florida (ca. 7500–500 CAL B.P.) and altered by modern land use. The reconstructions demonstrate the influence of ancient communities on modern landscapes and can be used as a basis for further analyses of hunter-gatherer land use, social interaction, and cosmology."
However "like any remote sensing technique, LiDAR records only a limited range of phenomena and the data are a snapshot of ground conditions at the time of collection. The temporally specific nature of LiDAR is problematic at sites with postdepositional destruction. This paper presents a method for identifying and recovering lost landscapes by combining LiDAR, archival aerial photographs, historical observations, and fieldwork.
This method was developed to reconstruct the topography of ancient shell mounds constructed by hunter-gatherers on the St. Johns River in northeastern Florida (ca. 7500–500 CAL B.P.) and altered by modern land use. The reconstructions demonstrate the influence of ancient communities on modern landscapes and can be used as a basis for further analyses of hunter-gatherer land use, social interaction, and cosmology."
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