LiDAR

With MA student Katie Eskew and with the help of Cliff Jenkins at the USDA in Jackson, I have been working to assemble DEM, DLG, orthophotos, satellite imagery, etc. for the Lower Mississippi Valley. This work is derived directly from the chapter I did on LMV settlement patterns with RC Dunnell (in the Time's River book). Yesterday, I got the LiDAR data for Tunica County, courtesy of Cliff. These are monster files - the county takes up 250 gigs - we have to mail hard drives around to share access to the data.

At any rate, the data are spectacular. With LiDAR one can pick up small elevation changes and identify them as potential earthworks. Here are some quick and relatively random examples. In the center of each image are features that appear to be mounds....

LIDAR

Orthophoto

LIDAR

Orthophoto

Settlement Patterns in the LMV

I just received page proofs for the chapter I did with RCD on settlement patterns in the Mississippi Valley. The chapter is going to appear in Rafferty and Peacock's Time's River volume to be published by the University of Alabama Press. If you want to check out the chapter, click here. The book is slated to be published on July 15 and you can pre order your copy from Amazon already. I recommend the 49.95 softcover edition. It looks to be a very good edited volume with the focus being themes rather than the traditional "periods." Thus each chapter looks at the Valley along a set of defined dimensions rather than the normal cultural historical chunks.