Semi-Automatic Detection of Indigenous Settlement Features on Hispaniola through Remote Sensing Data

Sonnemann, Till F.; Comer, Douglas C.; Patsolic, Jesse L.; Megarry, William P.; Herrera Malatesta, Eduardo; Hofman, Corinne L.

doi:10.3390/geosciences7040127

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Semi-Automatic Detection of Indigenous Settlement Features on Hispaniola through Remote Sensing Data

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Eduardo Herrera Malatesta

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Corinne L. Hofman

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Institute of Archaeology, Heritage Sciences and Art History (IADK), Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg, Am Kranen 14, 96047 Bamberg, Germany

Cultural Site Research and Management (CSRM), 2113 St. Paul Street, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA

Center for Imaging Science, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA

⁴

School of Natural and Built Environment, Queen’s University Belfast, Belfast BT7 1NN, UK

⁵

Faculty of Archaeology, Universiteit Leiden, Einsteinweg 2, 2333 CC Leiden, The Netherlands

Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.

Geosciences 2017, 7(4), 127; https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences7040127

Received: 15 October 2017 / Revised: 29 November 2017 / Accepted: 29 November 2017 / Published: 5 December 2017

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Remote Sensing and Geosciences for Archaeology)

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Abstract

Satellite imagery has had limited application in the analysis of pre-colonial settlement archaeology in the Caribbean; visible evidence of wooden structures perishes quickly in tropical climates. Only slight topographic modifications remain, typically associated with middens. Nonetheless, surface scatters, as well as the soil characteristics they produce, can serve as quantifiable indicators of an archaeological site, detectable by analyzing remote sensing imagery. A variety of pre-processed, very diverse data sets went through a process of image registration, with the intention to combine multispectral bands to feed two different semi-automatic direct detection algorithms: a posterior probability, and a frequentist approach. Two 5 × 5 km² areas in the northwestern Dominican Republic with diverse environments, having sufficient imagery coverage, and a representative number of known indigenous site locations, served each for one approach. Buffers around the locations of known sites, as well as areas with no likely archaeological evidence were used as samples. The resulting maps offer quantifiable statistical outcomes of locations with similar pixel value combinations as the identified sites, indicating higher probability of archaeological evidence. These still very experimental and rather unvalidated trials, as they have not been subsequently groundtruthed, show variable potential of this method in diverse environments. View Full-Text

Keywords: remote sensing; direct detection; GIS mapping; Caribbean archaeology; landscape archaeology

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MDPI and ACS Style

Sonnemann, T.F.; Comer, D.C.; Patsolic, J.L.; Megarry, W.P.; Herrera Malatesta, E.; Hofman, C.L. Semi-Automatic Detection of Indigenous Settlement Features on Hispaniola through Remote Sensing Data. Geosciences 2017, 7, 127. https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences7040127

AMA Style

Sonnemann TF, Comer DC, Patsolic JL, Megarry WP, Herrera Malatesta E, Hofman CL. Semi-Automatic Detection of Indigenous Settlement Features on Hispaniola through Remote Sensing Data. Geosciences. 2017; 7(4):127. https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences7040127

Chicago/Turabian Style

Sonnemann, Till F., Douglas C. Comer, Jesse L. Patsolic, William P. Megarry, Eduardo Herrera Malatesta, and Corinne L. Hofman 2017. "Semi-Automatic Detection of Indigenous Settlement Features on Hispaniola through Remote Sensing Data" Geosciences 7, no. 4: 127. https://doi.org/10.3390/geosciences7040127

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