Have been watching a PBS show discussing the use of drones to help do aerial archaeology all over the United Kingdom and Ireland in the Summer of 2018.?ÿ Absolutely fascinating finds thanks to an extraordinarily hot and DRY Summer that created parch marks outlining ancient construction (and some not so ancient).?ÿ Everything from an elaborate garden adjoining a castle that was intentionally removed about 400 years ago as the local culture shifted to a Roman battle station in a part of Wales where no Roman signs had been previously detected.?ÿ A large henge was found where none had been located previously.?ÿ What looked silly was that various workers mapping these sites were stabbing stakes in the ground and using what appeared to be cloth tapes in a sort of willynilly fashion.?ÿ How non-surveyor level!
The closest thing to ancient works that I can think of in Kansas is El Quartelejo and those are only a little over 300 years old.?ÿ That's a drop in the bucket compared to what the PBS show was featuring.
Anyone here know of any land surveyors working with archaeologists?
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https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/europes-dry-summer-yields-an-archaeological-treasure-trove
IANAS but I volunteered on three archaeology projects close to where I live, and have visited other projects and seen many of their lecture presentations.?ÿ The projects I was on used a tape to record artifact locations. I visited one that used a total station.?ÿ They code the type of object with the position, and the resulting plots of type versus XY versus depth tell a lot about how a site was used.?ÿ Lithic work (stone points) here, campfire there, trash over there, hide scraping here, etc.
In a reverse order of sorts...I got into land surveying after my stint working at an archaeology firm. I was lucky to find a job with an archaeology firm when I moved to StL from KY and logged three seasons before the funding started to dry up and then I slide over to surveying and never looked back. At the firm where I worked we have a Trimble 5600 and a static Trimble 4600. We used the total station to layout 5 meter grids in the initial work. Once a dig are was defined it would be bisected with two large 80d nails. Those nails would be tied down with the TS and then all finds were taped in. Everything was photographed, sketched, etc. I have held some fantastic artifacts in my hands.
Have you watched the show Time Team? It is British and available on Amazon Prime. All about Archaeology and surveyors, scanners, lidar etc. are common in the episodes.
St. Louis, surprisingly enough, has a fair amount of archaeology work due to the historical Mississippian Culture and Cahokia.?ÿ
Some English archaeologists are aware of proper surveying techniques. There's a very nice tutorial from the Historic England organization called "Traversing the Past." A PDF is available online for free. It covers what a total station is, sources of error, accuracy vs precision, setting up a TS, establishing control, traversing, data collection, and integration with GPS. It has several case studies, including one about Stonehenge. It even correctly explains the meanings of open, closed, loop, and link traverses. ????
https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/traversingthepast/
Did some in the TS days, the early GPS days, now I believe they do it mostly themselves.
I do work with them for oil and gas industry, how they survey finds I don't know, but you work in concert with the crews searching.
I have staked a road through a triceratops find, had to restake that one.?ÿ
I doubt I will ever work with non oil and gas archaeology again, getting paid was a struggle.?ÿ
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I've become acquainted with some researchers in Great Britain through social media who use LiDAR data to study Roman era land use and farming patterns
https://historicengland.org.uk/research/methods/airborne-remote-sensing/lidar/
