ENFIELD, N.H. (AP) — Scanning an empty field that once housed a Shaker village in New Hampshire, Jesse Casana had come in search of the foundations of stone buildings, long-forgotten roadways and other remnants of this community dating to the 1790s, AP reports in the following article:
But instead of a trowel and shovel, Casana and his Dartmouth College colleague Chad Hill are using a drone equipped with a thermal imaging camera and mapping instruments. The camera can identify remnants of buildings and other structures up to several feet below the surface, since the temperatures of that brick or stone material is often warmer than the soil around it. And by utilizing the drone, the researchers can survey an area in minutes that might take months with traditional methods.
“If you look, you see a flat field but below it there are big stone walls. There are cellars. There is a big old well, all kinds of stuff you can’t see on the ground,” Casana noted of a community that once housed nearly 100 buildings but was sold in the 1920s and is now an outdoor history museum. “Those things have different thermal properties. If you capture an image at the right moment, you can see it — which is amazing.”
Archaeologists have for decades have used aerial photography and more recently satellite imagery and data from laser sensors known as Lidar to map and discover new sites. The field is further transforming with the emergence of cheap drones, resulting in several significant discoveries in Asia, South America and the Middle East, including a huge manmade stone platform spotted last year hidden under sand in the ancient city of Petra in Jordan.
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Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons Copyright: George Fournaris License: CC-BY-SA
Source: AP
