Airborne LiDAR Reveals a Vast Archaeological Landscape at the Nan Madol World Heritage Site
by
Douglas C. Comer 1, Jacob A. Comer 1,*, Ioana A. Dumitru 1, William S. Ayres 2, Maureece J. Levin 3
, Katherine A. Seikel 4, Devin A. White 5 and Michael J. Harrower 6
Douglas C. Comer 1, Jacob A. Comer 1,*, Ioana A. Dumitru 1, William S. Ayres 2, Maureece J. Levin 3, Katherine A. Seikel 4, Devin A. White 5 and Michael J. Harrower 6
1
Cultural Site Research and Management Foundation, 2113 Saint Paul Street, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
2
Department of Anthropology, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 92403, USA
3
Archaeology Center, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
4
Department of Archaeology and Natural History, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia
5
Autonomous Sensing & Perception, Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM 87123, USA
6
Department of Near Eastern Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Remote Sens. 2019, 11(18), 2152; https://doi.org/10.3390/rs11182152
Received: 18 August 2019 / Revised: 7 September 2019 / Accepted: 11 September 2019 / Published: 16 September 2019
An airborne LiDAR survey of the Nan Madol World Heritage Site and adjacent Temwen Island revealed a complex, irrigated cultivation system, the first found in the Central and Eastern Caroline Islands. This informs the goals of the sustainable conservation project, funded by the U.S. Department of State Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation, that inspired the survey, and expands understanding of Nan Madol and its place in the network of Pacific island interaction and trade. Fieldwork verified the presence, across Temwen, of low, wet, cultivable areas, many of which are connected by water channels or separated by earthen berms. The berms themselves may also have been cultivated. In complexity, labor investment, and organization, the system is comparable to Nan Madol itself, the largest archaeological site in Micronesia, with structures on about 100 artificial islets built of stone and coral on a reef flat. Constructed over a millennium, Nan Madol was the seat of the Saudeleur Dynasty, which persisted from about 1200 to 1600 CE. The cultivation system appears to have been able to provide ample food for consumption, feasting, and redistribution or trade. If the landscape alteration described here proves to date to the time of the Saudeleur Dynasty, it will offer many avenues of research into the economic basis of Nan Madol’s regional dominance.
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Keywords:
LiDAR; Micronesia; Pohnpei; Nan Madol; hydrology; water management; remote sensing; archaeology; cultivation; site conservation
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This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Comer, D.C.; Comer, J.A.; Dumitru, I.A.; Ayres, W.S.; Levin, M.J.; Seikel, K.A.; White, D.A.; Harrower, M.J. Airborne LiDAR Reveals a Vast Archaeological Landscape at the Nan Madol World Heritage Site. Remote Sens. 2019, 11, 2152.
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