Remote sensing studies on archeological sites takes flight

By Alejandra Pulido-Guzman - Lethbridge Herald on April 18, 2023.

Herald photo by Alejandra Pulido-Guzman Tammi Mills places a stone on the ground as U of L student Alyssa No Runner measures the radius of the stone circle being created at the University of Lethbridge campus.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDapulido@lethbridgeherald.com

A University of Lethbridge student working on her PhD in remote sensing related to archaeology has been given the green light to utilize an area within the campus for her studies.

Tammi Mills was recently given permission to use a section of grassed area overlooking the coulees in the northeast area of the university, where she is building a few structures that later on can be also used by other students in different departments.

“We are going to be building stone circles, hearths and cairns, which are just piles of rocks that you might see along the landscape for various things. At Head-Smashed-In they have cairns to show the drive lanes where they pushed the bison down,” said Mills.

She said that since her PhD focuses on remote sensing, she will be using drone-acquired data after the structures are built to test the technique, with hopes of using drones to acquire data from known and unknown archaeological sites in the future.

“We’re going to use the drone to fly over it with the different sensors. The sensor that I’ll be using is just a camera to do an orthomosaic, which is basically it’ll take hundreds of pictures and then the software can stitch it all together into one big photo, and then from that orthomosaic we can build what is called a digital surface model, so it can be put into a 3D model of the landscape and the features,” said Mills.

 She said she is also hoping to acquire data from thermal imaging because the rocks on the ground absorb heat from it, but then eventually they emit the heat at different rates.

 “So you can potentially tell the different heat signatures between the rocks and the ground and maybe pick up some of the stone features as well, and then moving forward from that hopefully detecting buried features,” said Mills.

She said the features are being built with the help of students and members of the Lethbridge branch of the Archaeological Society of Alberta.

“It’s kind of a community project between the university and the archaeological society,” said Mills.

She said one of the reasons why she chose remote sensing for detecting archaeological sites was to have a hands-off survey.

“We’re still going to have to do shovel testing, excavations and foot surveys, but this can augment it, it can help us refine our target areas for lack of better description, so that it becomes more efficient. As archaeologists, we’re always going to need to look at the ground, but sometimes you can’t see things on the ground – you have to look at it from the air,” said Mills.

She said the potential also exists to be walking within an archeological area and not being aware of it, so if people find something that may seem archaeological they should report it so it can be investigated and recorded.

“There is a page on the Alberta government website . . . they ask you to basically leave things where you found them. If you can GPS or take a location point and then you can just call them and say ‘I found something, here’s a photo and here’s a GPS point’ and then they can look up in their database whether or not it’s actually a recorded site or if it’s an unrecorded site, they can make arrangements to go out and record it properly,” said Mills.

She said one good thing about building the features was the possibility of other students benefitting from them.

 “The archaeology department can come out here with their classes, they can map out the features, they can use it for practical techniques for their students as well, so lots of other possibilities for this control site for the university moving forward once I’m done with my research,” said Mills.

To report an archaeological find visit https://www.alberta.ca/report-archaeological-find.aspx

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