UF’s GatorEye drones outfitted with a new sensor suite were used to find the 900 to 1200 AD settlement that was a significant producer of beads made from seashells. (Image credit: University of Florida)
A team of researchers from the University of Florida recently discovered a 900 to 1200 AD settlement on Raleigh Island using drones outfitted with LiDAR, which provided topographical data and archeological details at high resolution. The researchers used UF’s Spatial Ecology & Conservation (Spec) Lab’s GatorEye Unmanned Flying Laboratory drones to find the settlement, which is outfitted with a high-tech sensor suite that helped shed light on how the village was organized.
The GatorEye UFL used for the discovery was designed around DJI’s Matrice 600 Pro hexacopter, which is outfitted with a Headwall Photonics Nano VNIR 270 spectral band hyperspectral sensor, and a Velodyne VLP-32c Ultra Puck dual-return LiDAR sensor. It also packs a radiometric thermal sensor, high-resolution RGB camera, and an upward-facing Ocean Optics’ hyperspectral sensor, all of which are aligned to grant immediate live 3D LiDAR data and visual (GoPro cameras) feeds to operators on the ground.
The drone’s sensor suite provided topographical details of the settlement, which shows oyster shells around 37 residences. (Image credit: University of Florida)
The GatorEye UFL high-resolution sensor suite helped the researchers identify a complex of at 37 residential spaces that are surrounded by a 4-foot tall wall of oyster shells, and in several of them, they found evidence of large-scale bead production.
Ph.D. student and research team leader Terry Barbour explains, “What we have here is a settlement at the source of this raw material at the time when marine shell was starting to become a heavily demanded social item. The fact we have strong evidence of bead manufacture at a site with equally impressive architecture to guide us in understanding how production was organized socially makes this place really special, and as of now the only place like it we are aware of.”
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