Journal of Field Archaeology

ISSN: 0093-4690 (Print) 2042-4582 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/yjfa20

Lasers Without Lost Cities: Using Drone Lidar

to Capture Architectural Complexity at Kuelap,
Amazonas, Peru

Parker VanValkenburgh, K. C. Cushman, Luis Jaime Castillo Butters, Carol

Rojas Vega, Carson B. Roberts, Charles Kepler & James Kellner

To cite this article: Parker VanValkenburgh, K. C. Cushman, Luis Jaime Castillo Butters, Carol
Rojas Vega, Carson B. Roberts, Charles Kepler & James Kellner (2020) Lasers Without Lost Cities:
Using Drone Lidar to Capture Architectural Complexity at Kuelap, Amazonas, Peru, Journal of Field
Archaeology, 45:sup1, S75-S88, DOI: 10.1080/00934690.2020.1713287

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00934690.2020.1713287

© 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa

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JOURNAL OF FIELD ARCHAEOLOGY
2020, VOL. 45, NO. S1, S75–S88
https://doi.org/10.1080/00934690.2020.1713287

Lasers Without Lost Cities: Using Drone Lidar to Capture Architectural Complexity
at Kuelap, Amazonas, Peru
Parker VanValkenburgh a, K. C. Cushman a
, Luis Jaime Castillo Buttersb, Carol Rojas Vegac, Carson B. Robertsd,
Charles Keplerd and James Kellnera
a
Brown University; bPontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima, Peru; cIndependent Scholar, Lima, Peru; dHeadwall Photonics, Bolton, MA, USA

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
We report the results of drone lidar survey at a high-elevation archaeological site in the Chachapoyas Lidar; UAV; Drone;
region of Peruvian Amazonia. Unlike traditional airborne remote sensing, drone lidar produces very architecture; Peru;
high-density measurements at a wide range of scan angles by operating at low altitudes and slow Chachapoya; Kuelap
flight speeds. These measurements can resolve near vertical surfaces and novel dimensions of
variability in architectural datasets. We show in a case study at Kuelap that the number of detected
structures almost exactly matches the number reported from previous ground level surveys, and
we use these data to quantify the relative circularity and size frequency distribution of architectural
structures. We demonstrate variability in domestic architecture that was obscured in previous
models produced using low-resolution remote sensing. Spatial analysis of these attributes produces
new hypotheses about the site’s construction history and social organization.

Introduction
Airborne lidar (light detection and ranging) has revolutionized
the mapping of archaeological sites and landscapes over the last
15 years. Lidar’s combination of automated, active, high den-
sity, and long-distance signal emission has proven to be increas-
ingly effective at generating high resolution ground models of
archaeological sites located in a wide variety of field conditions,
including areas of dense vegetation. Flown on aerial platforms,
lidar sensors are capable of producing datasets that are “big” in
two senses: 1) they have higher levels of spatial resolution (and
file sizes) than satellite remote sensing datasets and even image-
based models; and 2) they achieve wider geographic coverage
than is often possible through terrestrial laser scanning (TLS).
Analytically, lidar datasets (even those with limited geographic
footprints) may illustrate one of the key characteristics of big
aerial data—the revelation of new dimensions of variability
(and, sometimes, unexpected insights) in mapped phenomena,
by virtue of their resolution, scale, and/or ability to capture pre-
viously unmapped features.
To be sure, some airborne lidar surveys have merely served
to confirm existing interpretations of archaeological land-
scapes rather than generating novel insights about them.
Yet a great number of surveys have indeed enabled scholars
to create extensive ground models of unmapped sites and
yielded transformational insights into the scale and character
of urban and agricultural landscapes, particularly in forested
environments (Canuto et al. 2018; Chase et al. 2011; Chase
et al. 2012; Chase et al. 2014; Fisher and Leisz 2013; Fisher
et al. 2016; Garrison, Houston, and Alcover Firpi 2019;
Golden et al. 2016; Hesse 2010; Masini, Coluzzi, and Lasapo-
nara 2011; Opitz et al. 2015).
The eastern slopes of the Peruvian Andes (also known as the
montaña or ceja de selva—the “eyebrow of the jungle”) are a
region in which airborne lidar holds a great deal of promise
for mapping previously un-surveyed archaeological landscapes
and capturing new dimensions of variability within them. Dec-
ades of excavations and pedestrian reconnaissance have
demonstrated that the montaña has a deep history of human
occupation and that late Prehispanic population sizes were, in
many areas, substantially larger than those found in the region
today (Bonavia 1981; Church 1996; Church and Von Hagen
2008; Clasby 2014; Guengerich 2015; Le Moine and Raymond
1987; Raymond 1992; Schjellerup 2003). As population
declined after the Spanish invasion due to colonial violence, dis-
ease, and migration, many settlements, terracing systems, and
grazing lands were abandoned, and tropical forest vegetation
recolonized landscapes that had formerly been the sites of
intensive economic exploitation and habitation. As a result,
many sections of the ceja de selva now contain extensive
anthropogenic features that are obscured by dense overgrowth,
making them quite difficult to map on an individual basis and
impeding the progress of systematic pedestrian survey.
More than simply presenting practical challenges for
archaeological fieldwork, landcover and topography in the
eastern slopes have also impeded scientific understanding of
regional history, obscuring the place of the montaña in
regional social developments, including those linking the
Andes and the Amazon. For much of their postcolonial his-
tory, the eastern slopes have been treated as a marginal region
caught between the “green hell” or “counterfeit paradise” of
the lowland Amazon (Meggers 1971; Goodland and Irwin
1975) and the supposedly more developed highland and
coastal regions of the Andes (Church 1996; Church and
Von Hagen 2008; Church and Guengerich 2017). Even as
scientific investigations at sites in the ceja de selva have
been carried out since the mid 20th century (e.g., Reichlen
and Reichlen 1950; Ruiz Estrada 1972, 1979; Thompson
1976), explorers and the tourist industry have continued to

CONTACT Parker VanValkenburgh parker_vanvalkenburgh@brown.edu Department of Anthropology, Brown University, 128 Hope St., Providence, RI 02912,
USA
© 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/),
which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
S76 P. VANVALKENBURGH ET AL.
portray the area as mysterious and impenetrable (Savoy
1970). Archaeologists working up and down the eastern
edge of the cordillera have chipped away at these myths, illus-
trating the diversity of montaña archaeology and socio-cul-
tural formations (Church 1996; Guengerich 2014; Narváez
Vargas 2013; Schjellerup 1997; Wilkinson 2013). In parallel,
research in the lowland Amazon has demonstrated that that
region was far more populated in Precolumbian times than
once presumed (Arroyo-Kalin 2010; Clement et al. 2015;
Heckenberger et al. 2008; Heckenberger 2005; Levis et al.
2017; Neves et al. 2003; Stahl 2002) and that some inno-
vations and cultural traditions later shared across extensive
areas of the Andes may have arisen in Amazonia (Valdez
2008; Valdez 2007; Clasby 2014). Together, these develop-
ments have reframed the importance of the eastern slopes
to continental archaeology and seeded the development of a
robust regional research community.
Yet landcover and topography continue to present meth-
odological challenges for research in the ceja de selva. Because
of the difficulty of conducting conventional pedestrian sur-
vey, regional histories of the eastern slopes of the Peruvian
Andes continue to rely on site-based research and chronolo-
gies, and substantial disagreements remain concerning major
demographic, social, and political developments. On the level
of individual sites, vegetation cover impedes the use of many
analog and digital technologies for recording settlement
structure and architectural variation. Tree cover obscures
GNSS signals and makes detailed work with optical instru-
ments such as theodolites and total stations so time-consum-
ing that individual structures often cannot be recorded in
great detail. As a result, site maps necessarily represent struc-
tures as somewhat simplified polygons and lines, in a process
of distillation and projection similar to that carried out by
archaeologists in another forest-covered region, lowland
Mesoamerica (Hutson 2012). In such contexts, the simplifica-
tion of architectural form is a practical necessity that still
allows for a great deal of insight into the organization of indi-
vidual settlements. However, it can also conceal meaningful
variation. As previous researchers have shown, attention to
subtle differences in architectural style and execution may
reveal the work of individual builders and outline the con-
tours of local traditions, enabling archaeologists to “people”
the past and to build more fine-grained understanding of
social life and site chronology (Tringham 1991; Guengerich
2014; Halperin and Schwartz 2016).
Lidar, both terrestrial and airborne, provides means for
improving the capture of subtle variation in architectural
form, across large areas, in challenging field conditions.
Because of its proven ability to create ground models in den-
sely forested contexts more efficiently than TLS, airborne
lidar will form an important component of solutions for
both regional and local mapping projects on the eastern
slopes of the Andes (Khan, Aragão, and Iriarte 2017). How-
ever, among Andeanists, there has been some skepticism of
lidar’s potential contributions to mapping sites in the mon-
taña. In 2016, a consortium called the Peru Lidar Project
(www.facebook.com/mplidar/) conducted limited airborne
lidar survey over Machu Picchu Archaeological Park and
Río Abiseo National Park, both located in heavily forested
regions of the selva alta. Subcanopy point densities from
these flights proved to be too low to resolve major archaeolo-
gical features, in part due to the density of understory veg-
etation. These limited results have led to a perception
among some archaeologists working in the region that air-
borne lidar has limited applications in the eastern slopes of
the Andes.
Our experience employing drone lidar for localized map-
ping at Kuelap suggests that more satisfying results can be
achieved through modifications to instrumentation and
flight parameters. As with any application of imaging tech-
nology, successful data collection depends on careful pairings
of hardware and collection parameters with project areas and
research questions. The configurations of drone lidar that we
employ here offer one solution to mapping relatively small
areas of forest and underlying terrain in great detail. We illus-
trate its potential and limitations through data collection at
the site of Kuelap, located in the middle Utcubamba River
Valley of the Peruvian department of Amazonas, an area typi-
cally affiliated with the Chachapoya.
Background
Kuelap and the Chachapoya
Alongside the sections of Cuzco’s Urubamba valley made
famous by the archaeological site of Machu Picchu, the Cha-
chapoyas region is perhaps the sector of the Peruvian mon-
taña that is best known to archaeologists, if not also the
general public. Described in early Spanish colonial chronicles
as a province of the Inka empire, Chachapoyas became an
administrative unit of the Spanish Viceroyalty following its
occupation in the 1540’s C.E. These same sources frequently
credit the people of this province with holding off an Inka
invasion in the 1450’s C.E., before succumbing to a second
campaign around 1470 C.E., earning them a reputation for
ferocity and military prowess—albeit one that may reflect
Inka imperial propaganda more than lived experience
(Toyne and Narváez 2014).
For generations, archaeologists have also used the word
Chachapoya to describe a complex of supposedly common
cultural traits found among Late Intermediate Period (ca.
1100–1450 C.E.) archaeological sites, to the east of the
Marañón River ranging from beyond the furthest southern
border of what is now Rio Abiseo National Park, in the
department of La Libertad, to as far north as the confluence
of the Utcubamba and Marañón Rivers (Figure 1). Early
models presumed that these traits—which include hilltop
settlements comprised of circular houses, sometimes with
large platform bases and exterior mosaic friezes, as well as
certain decorative motifs in pottery and textiles—outlined a
cultural unity that underlay the apparent regional political
coherence presented in the chronicles (Church 1996: Church
and Guengerich 2017). However, historical research suggests
that the political and ethnic landscapes of the eastern slopes
of Amazonas, La Libertad, and San Martin departments
were quite fragmented (Espinoza Soriano 1967; Ruiz Estrada
2017), and recent archaeological research has highlighted
additional diversity in material culture, casting doubt on
the unity of Chachapoya culture, even as some elements of
shared traditions remain evident (Crandall 2017; McCray
2017; Church and Guengerich 2017).
The archaeological site of Kuelap, centered on a limestone
ridge at 3000 meters above sea level on the western flank of
the Utcubamba River Valley, has been almost inseparable
from the identity of the Chachapoya as an archaeological cul-
ture since the times of its initial description in the 19th and

Figure 1. Map of Kuelap’s location within Peru and the department of Amazonas; locations mentioned in text highlighted.
early 20th century. Comprised of remains spread over as
many as 460 hectares and dating from at least the Middle
Horizon (800–1100 C.E.) through the Late Intermediate
Period (1100–14570 C.E.), Late Horizon / Inka (1470–1535
C.E.), Spanish Colonial (1535–1821 C.E.), and Republican
(1821 C.E.–present) periods, Kuelap is nevertheless often
equated with the so-called “fortress” or citadel, a walled settle-
ment that lies atop the limestone mass of Cerro la Barreta
(Church and Von Hagen 2008, 914). Its monumental exterior
walls, which consist of worked limestone blocks stacked
between 10 to 20 meters above the ground surface and
extending some 1500 meters around the ridgetop (a measure-
ment that includes walls flanking the site’s three main
entrances), have attracted the interest of explorers and
JOURNAL OF FIELD ARCHAEOLOGY S77
archaeologists for generations (Bandelier 1907; Langlois
1940; Reichlen and Reichlen 1950; Ruiz Estrada 1972; Bradley
2005; Narváez Vargas 2013; Toyne and Narváez 2011).
While tourist literature has taken to promoting Kuelap as a
“new Machu Picchu” and frequently depicted the site as being
a mysterious settlement in the jungle, the terrain around it is
in fact quite diverse, consisting of a patchwork of tropical for-
est, scrubland, and agricultural fields. During state-sponsored
archaeological and conservation work in the walled settle-
ment between 2003 and 2011, tree cover was substantially
reduced for the purpose of architectural conservation and
consolidation. Still, remaining tree cover poses significant
challenges for capturing the site surface using total stations,
high resolution terrestrial GNSS and aerial photography.
S78 P. VANVALKENBURGH ET AL.
Detailed mapping was conducted by Alfredo Narváez Vargas
in 1986–1987, but published versions of that map and more
recent cartography of the site are primarily focused on repre-
senting the relative number and position of structures and do
not capture fine-grained variation in individual constructions
(e.g., Narváez Vargas 2013, 122–123; Toyne and Narváez
2014, 345).
Kuelap is surely the most extensively studied of all sites
located in the Utcubamba river valley, if not the Chachapoyas
region as a whole (Guengerich 2015, 367), but a number of
essential questions remain about its history and construction.
The site’s architecture abounds in defensive affordances: the
citadel is built atop a ridgetop with a cliff on one side, is sur-
rounded by massive walls, and has highly restricted access via
three narrow, stepped entryways that are themselves flanked
by high stone walls. In the northwestern sector of the citadel,
the “upper town” (pueblo alto) is further separated from the
rest of the settlement by walls 5–10 meters high, with two
narrow access points quite similar to those that penetrate
its exterior walls. Other evidence suggests that Kuelap wit-
nessed at least occasional moments of conflict during its his-
tory. At the far northern portion of the walled settlement,
adjacent to the D-shaped torreón, excavations uncovered a
cache of over 2500 sling stones, the most common form of
projectile weapon used in the Precolumbian Andes (Narváez
Vargas 2013, 138; Church and Von Hagen 2008, 916). Toyne
and Narváez (2014, 351) also present evidence of a “mas-
sacre” in which 94.3% of the observable collection of 66 skulls
of individuals buried in the site’s plataforma circular (circular
platform) showed evidence of perimortem blunt force
trauma. Differences in chronological scenarios discussed by
Narváez Vargas (2013) and Toyne and Narváez (2014)
suggest that dating of this deposit to the Late Intermediate,
Inka, or even Spanish colonial periods is not yet definitive.
Yet both Bradley (2005; n.d.) and Narváez Vargas (2013)
also suggest that the classification of the site as a “fortress”
is overly simplistic, noting the remains of highly ritualized
activities in many sectors of the site, including great numbers
of human burials associated with exterior walls. Excavations
in the idiosyncratic structure known as the tintero (ink
well), a solid mass of stone and fill with a bulb-shaped shaft
down its middle, have produced numerous secondary
human burials, carved Spondylus shell figures and exotic
styles of pottery. Narváez interprets these remains as evidence
that the structure functioned as the primary ritual locus of the
walled settlement, and he has accordingly renamed it the tem-
plo mayor (main temple).
Site chronology is also a matter of debate. Based on stylis-
tic similarities between some pottery found in lower levels of
excavations, Arturo Ruiz Estrada (1972) has suggested that
Kuelap was occupied since at least the Middle Horizon
(800–1100 C.E.)—an hypothesis echoed by Narváez (1987,
2013). The site’s dates of foundation have reportedly been
pushed back even further via radiocarbon dating of samples
from the templo mayor (Narváez Vargas 2013, 150), but the
results remain unpublished. More fine-grained dating of
structures and occupations (particularly those located near
the surface) has yet to be conducted, though Narváez
(2013) suggests that many of these structures may have
been constructed following the Inka invasion. Inka imperial
pottery and prominent Inka constructions conventionally
called kallankas (long, multi-doored feasting halls) are indeed
located near the southern and northern limits of the site, one
closely aligned with a vein of exposed bedrock within the
upper town, the other built directly atop circular structures
in the south. These features make it clear that Kuelap was
also actively incorporated into the Inka empire. Isolated
finds of post-conquest material culture point to continued
activity following the Spanish invasion of the Utcubamba val-
ley (Narváez Vargas 2013, 151, 155–156). As we discuss
below, variation in structural morphology recorded in ground
models of the site frame additional hypotheses about its con-
struction sequence, which might be tested with further exca-
vations and dating.
Previous excavations in the citadel have already generated
insights into the character and pacing of Kuelap’s construc-
tion. Behind the exterior walls, archaeologists have revealed
an enormous mass of rubble and earthen fill (Ruiz Estrada
2009, 39–45), but the exposed bedrock within the upper
town indicates that not all of the space seemingly “behind”
the exterior walls is filled with undifferentiated rubble. Rather,
like many Precolumbian monuments built in the Peruvian
highlands and coast, the walled settlement is a modified
mountaintop whose architects incorporated underlying rock
formations into its construction. Still, the immensity of the
fill and its stone facing, as well as “clearly defined segments”
within the fill itself—which recall the columned segments of
adobe bricks in coastal monuments such as the Huaca de la
Luna (Hastings and Moseley 1975; Shimada and Cavallaro
1985)—suggest to Narváez (2013, 140) that it must have
been built over centuries rather than in one single flurry.
Excavations sponsored by Peru’s Plan COPESCO between
2016 and 2018 have also revealed evidence of at least one pre-
vious construction stage near the site’s main entrance, in the
form of an earlier worked stone wall, nested more than ten
meters within the outermost one (Jorge Chiguala, personal
communication 2017). Coupled with Ruiz’s (1972, 2009,
15) inference that the upper town is the oldest portion of
the site (because excavations within it produced the oldest
ceramics), these patterns make it possible that the Kuelap
citadel grew in stages from west to east and perhaps north
to south. We return to this theory in the discussion and con-
clusion section below.
Further debate centers on sociopolitical organization at
Kuelap during the Late Intermediate Period. Many early
interpretations took the site’s monumental walls as evidence
that it must have served as a center of concentrated political
power (Gil 1938; Brush 1977). Narváez (2013, 131) argues
that the exceptionality of Kuelap’s architecture and occu-
pation makes it likely that the site served as the “political capi-
tal of the Chachapoyas kingdom” whose “power was capable
of mobilizing the collective labor of diverse affiliated nations
under its rule … [and] of organizing the political control of a
vast territory whose limits reached the Marañón river in the
west and the Huallaga River in the east” (my translation).
In contrast, Church and Von Hagen (2008), Guengerich
(2015) and Church and Guengerich (2017) note that while
the site’s monumental walls are indeed exceptional, Kuelap’s
size does not place it atop the kinds of settlement hierarchies
that are typical of highly centralized political systems. Indeed,
the number of structures at the site (and likely, population
numbers) are not exceptional when compared to other
large sites in Amazonas and La Libertad, such as Caserones
(Schjellerup 1997), Purun Llaqta de Cheto (Ruiz Estrada
2004), and Olán / La Jalca (Lerche 1986). Moreover, archae-
ological excavations at the site have yet to identify unequal
 JOURNAL OF FIELD ARCHAEOLOGY S79

distributions of high-quality foods or prestige goods in dom- in some conditions. Notably, the fact that large aircraft need
estic structures, suggesting relatively little in the way of mate- to fly at high altitudes over ground surfaces and forest cano-
rialized class distinctions. pies (both for safety reasons and to avoid disturbing some fea-
tures they seek to image, such as vegetation) limits both their
positional accuracy and their ability to resolve smaller objects
Lidar and Drones
and complex three-dimensional surfaces. Because GPS errors
Lidar is a relatively old technology that has undergone signifi- accumulate as the distance between target and antenna
cant advances in recent years. Both laser scanning and the increases, higher flight altitudes result in worse horizontal
term “lidar” (sometimes also rendered as “LiDAR,” placement of laser pulses (Kellner et al. 2019, 6). Moreover,
“LIDAR,” or “Lidar”) have existed since the 1960’s, but the they also produce larger laser footprints due to beam diver-
technology’s use in civilian mapping applications was limited gence, and scan angles (that is, the angles of emission of the
before precision GPS and IMUs (inertial measurement units) laser pulse with respect to nadir) are restricted to increasingly
became available in the 1990’s. The development of higher narrow ranges (Kellner et al. 2019, 6; Figure 2). Terrestrial
rates of pulse emission and more accurate positioning sys- laser scanning (TLS) offers the advantage of much higher
tems has allowed sensors mounted on crewed aircraft to col- point densities and smaller beam footprints, but can be
lect high-resolution spatial datasets over expansive quite tedious to deploy because TLS instruments need to be
geographic areas. Initial deployment of airborne lidar for moved incrementally in order to ensure scanning of objects
environmental applications produced some datasets useful from multiple angles. Moreover, TLS may perform poorly
for archaeologists, but the high cost of sensors themselves, for scanning the tops of high features such as walls or trees
as well as the associated costs of deployment (including (Calders et al. 2017; Disney et al. 2018).
flight time and fuel) greatly limited archaeologically-specific Two recent advances—commercial UAVs capable of car-
lidar missions until the 2000’s. In the UK and Ireland, the ear- rying substantial payloads and lighter, higher resolution
liest archaeological lidar missions focused on mapping rela- lidar sensors—offer major advantages for some archaeologi-
tively small sites and landscapes with little vegetation cover cal mapping applications. Relatively few published archaeolo-
(e.g., Shell and Roughley 2004; Devereux et al. 2005; Bewley, gical studies have employed drone lidar, but existing literature
Crutchley, and Shell 2005). While measurement rates (33,000 has reported some enhancements vs. sensors mounted on
pulses per second achieved by the likes of the Optech ALTM crewed aircraft (Khan, Aragão, and Iriarte 2017; Risbøl and
3033 sensor used by Shell and Roughley 2004) and point den- Gustavsen 2018). The smaller size of UAVs in comparison
sities (between one point per .5 and 2 square meters Shell and
Roughley 2004; Bewley, Crutchley, and Shell 2005) offered
significant improvement over many previous datasets used
for the production of digital elevation models, they still
proved too low when flown on relatively fast-moving light
aircraft to allow for effective penetration of forest cover.
The applications of aerial laser scanning in archaeology
expanded following the development of sensors with higher
scan speeds and measurement rates, allowing for significantly
higher point densities and measurements of ground surfaces
below forest cover in some conditions. Airborne lidar gained
new visibility in Americanist archaeology following the pub-
lication of large-scale surveys by Chase and colleagues (2011;
2012) at the Maya settlement of Caracol, Belize and Fisher
and Leisz (2013) at Angamuco, Mexico. In both circum-
stances, resulting terrain models revealed scales and densities
of constructions and anthropogenic landscape modifications
that greatly exceeded earlier estimates based on pedestrian
survey. Evans et al. (2013) achieved similar results at Angkor,
Cambodia, demonstrating that the number of structures in
the settlement and the area of modified landscapes around
it was far greater than previously estimated. These studies
have sparked a veritable explosion of interest in the use of
lidar for mapping archaeological sites in forested terrain,
which has only grown with the publication of additional
impactful research (Chase et al. 2014; Garrison, Houston,
and Alcover Firpi 2019; Canuto et al. 2018).
Among Americanist archaeologists, this family of appli-
cations—which for the purpose of shorthand, we refer to
here as “big tropical forest lidar”—has become almost synon-
ymous with aerial laser scanning. But while sensors with long
ranges, flown on crewed aircraft, have proven to be transfor-
mative tools for mapping sites under forest cover in relatively
flat terrain, they are merely one of an expanding array of Figure 2. Comparison of the effects of sensor parameters and flight altitudes on
instrumental configurations, and they face notable challenges scan angles.
S80 P. VANVALKENBURGH ET AL.
to crewed aircraft allows them to fly closer to the surfaces of
archaeological sites while following national laws and safety
guidelines. UAVs can also fly at slower speeds than crewed
aircraft. Deployed lower altitudes, in slower moving craft,
UAV-mounted lidar sensors are capable of collecting higher
density datasets with smaller beam footprints and improved
horizontal beam placement. Moreover, as Risbøl and Gustav-
sen (2018) note, lower flights also enable sensors to capture
objects at a greater range of scan angles, improving imaging
of more vertical surfaces and complex objects—a character-
istic that should prove particularly valuable for the documen-
tation of archaeological features in the montaña, such as high
walls, cliff tombs, stone reliefs, and settlements located on
very steep slopes (see Figure 2).
Using drones to fly lidar sensors can also pose several chal-
lenges for archaeological applications. Battery-powered
UAVs—particularly, multi-copters—have much shorter
maximum flight times than fueled aircraft, which limits the
total amount of data that can be collected in a single flight
and also places practical restrictions on the locations in
which drone lidar can be deployed. Even in countries where
it is legal to fly battery-powered UAVs beyond line-of-sight,
aircraft must be launched relatively close to the sites one
wishes to capture, to avoid using up battery power simply
flying to and from the desired points of data collection. Find-
ing open areas that provide clear sight lines during flight can
be particularly challenging in heavily forested terrain. More-
over, the large lithium ion batteries that are necessary for
powering motors capable of lifting heavier craft and sensors
have significant transport restrictions. Fuel-powered UAVs
and fixed-wing UAVs are quite promising for improving
flight times and avoiding some of these challenges (Khan,
Aragão, and Iriarte 2017; Kellner et al. 2019), but even the lar-
gest commercially available drones have ranges that are sig-
nificantly shorter than crewed aircraft. Furthermore,
restrictions on the import, export, and deployment of larger
drones often make it challenging to use them outside of the
countries where they are built and stored.
Our experience using drone lidar reflects some of these
limitations. Import restrictions on our first-choice drone—a
large, fuel-powered UAV—led us to pursue a second option
involving use of a mass-produced, battery-powered multi-
copter. Internal shipping restrictions then limited the number
of batteries to which we had access, which impacted how
much data we could collect in one day. At elevations between
2800 and 3000 meters, we experienced reduced flight times
(on average, 10 minutes of data collection time per flight)
even while employing propellers designed for use at high
elevations, which limited our ability to fly aircraft at greater
distances from our launch points. Despite these challenges,
our results demonstrate the transformational potential of
drone lidar for mapping some archaeological sites in forested
terrain.
Methods
Instrumentation
Our instrumentation for this project consisted of a hyper-
spectral imager, a lidar sensor, and a GPS-IMU (Global Posi-
tioning System and Internal Measurement Unit) flown on a
commercial hexacopter. The core of the data acquisition sys-
tem was the Headwall Hyperspec Nano, which contains both
a Visible/Near Infrared (VNIR) hyperspectral line scan ima-
ger and a data acquisition and control computer. During
research flights, hyperspectral data were also collected, but
analysis of that data is still ongoing and we do not discuss
results in this paper. In addition to capturing the spectral
image data, the Hyperspec Nano stored raw lidar return
data and real-time data from the payload GPS-IMU, an
Applanix APX-15. Following collection, raw lidar data were
sent from the sensor to the Nano as a stream of packets
encoded in the User Datagram Protocol and high frequency
GPS-IMU data were downloaded directly from the GPS/
IMU unit. The GPS data were post-processed using simul-
taneously acquired data from a Trimble GNSS Smart Target
Base Station in Applanix POSPac UAV software to generate
a Smoothed Best Estimate of Trajectory (SBET) GPS-IMU
file and a geolocated point cloud.
The aircraft used for these measurements was a DJI
Matrice 600 Pro, outfitted with high altitude propellers. The
sensor package was mounted on a three-axis actively stabil-
ized DJI Ronin gimbal, with the GPS antenna mounted on
top of the aircraft. The lidar sensor, a Velodyne Puck, was
mounted so that its axis of rotation was parallel to the direc-
tion of motion of the aircraft, so that approximately half the
time the lasers were directed toward the ground and could
potentially generate returns. The Puck has 16 lasers, each
paired with a detector, producing six nanosecond pulses at
903 nanometers. In the configuration used here, the laser/
detector pairs rotated at approximately 10 Hz and generated
approximately 300,000 pulses per second. The lidar system
was set to collect the strongest returns from each pulse. Col-
lecting dual returns (strongest and last) would have provided
better penetration of the canopy, and potentially more points
on the ground below trees.
Survey flights were flown under automatic control, using
the UgCS flight control program. Flight patterns pro-
grammed to cover the survey area in parallel flight paths
with approximately 40% overlap between the fields of view
of the hyperspectral imager. The overlap of the lidar data
between flight lines was significantly larger. Flights were pro-
grammed to be at an altitude of approximately 50 m above
ground level, following a 30m-resolution DEM generated by
the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM). The raw
lidar data, along with the SBET GPS/IMU data were pro-
cessed with Headwall Photonics’ LiDAR Tools program,
which produced point clouds in LAS format.
Data Processing
Both automated and manual processing methods were used
to produce a model of the ground and architectural structures
at Kuelap using free and open-source tools. First, all lidar
returns were automatically classified as ground or non-
ground using the lidR package in R (version 3.5.1) (R Core
Team 2013; Rousell and Auty 2019). To enable processing
on a desktop workstation (64-bit with 12 GB RAM) while
minimizing edge effects on classification, lidar data were re-
tiled to 100 m by 100 m subsets with 5 m overlap prior to
ground classification, resulting in 37 separate tiles. The
ground classification algorithm in lidR uses progressive mor-
phological filtering to identify and remove non-ground
objects using height thresholds for neighboring points in
increasingly large windows (Zhang et al. 2003). For this appli-
cation, ground classification parameters were chosen to

Figure 3. 40 × 40 m tile representing classification procedures. Ground depicted with elevation color ramp. Non-ground points identified through automatic classifi-
cation shown in black. Non-ground points identified through manual classification shown in white.
remove as much vegetation as possible while retaining all
architectural structures as “ground” points. To achieve this
goal, the ground classification was performed using a single
threshold height taller than the architectural structures in
the landscape (5.5 m) and using a sequence of window sizes
(0.6, 0.8, and 1.0 m) that produced consistently good results,
as determined by visual inspection on subsets of the land-
scape. This automated ground classification procedure was
successful in removing tall vegetation, but in order to retain
architectural structures of interest tree trunks and other veg-
etation shorter than 5.5 m were not correctly classified as
non-ground. Additionally, some points were erroneously
classified as “non-ground” along the tall outer walls of Kuelap
(Figure 3).
Automatically-classified lidar data were further edited
manually to remove tree trunks, short vegetation, and struc-
tures not of archeological interest (e.g., wooden handrails
along tourist routes within the site, and wooden architectural
supports added by conservators to support stone structures at
risk of collapse). To facilitate manual inspection, the lidar
point cloud was re-tiled to 40 m by 40 m subsets with no
overlap, resulting in a total of 77 tiles. All manual editing
was completed using CloudCompare, an open-source plat-
form for visualizing and processing point clouds (CloudCom-
pare 2019). For each tile, the automated ground classification
was loaded as a scalar field and the point cloud was split into
ground or architectural structure (scalar field = 2) and non-
ground vegetation (scalar field = 1) using the “Filter by
value” scalar field function. Then, manual edits to the auto-
mated classification values were made using the segment
and merge features. This method led to great success in gen-
erating a ground model of the site, though some recent archi-
tectural features added to the site—particularly, low wooden
walkways located quite close to the ground surface—were
JOURNAL OF FIELD ARCHAEOLOGY S81
too little separated from the site’s archaeological features to
allow for them to be effectively edited out of the point
cloud. However, they did not significantly obscure structures
of archaeological interest.
After manual editing, a surface mesh was made of the
walled settlement. To create the surface mesh, all lidar points
from ground and architectural structures were loaded into
CloudCompare. A height raster of the area was created
using the “Rasterize” projection tool, selecting the maximum
point height in each grid cell and interpolating the value of
any empty cells. The raster was made using a 0.1 m grid
size, then the raster grid was exported as a mesh. The surface
mesh was smoothed using the “Smooth (Laplacian)” mesh
function with 10 iterations and a smoothing factor of 0.1.
To enable visualization and further measurement of architec-
tural structures, the scene was given a uniform color (grey),
set to top view, and shaded using the “EDL Shader” display
function.
Following mesh generation, the resulting, georeferenced
hillshade was imported into Imagej version 1.8.0, an open
source image processing program that runs Java (Rasband
1997). Initially developed for research with imagery produced
in microbiological research, Imagej provides a suite of tools
that allow for efficient creation of two-dimensional vector fea-
tures and their morphological analysis. Outlines of each
building foundation were carefully traced using the Freehand
Selection Tool in Imagej, to create a total of 421 individual
polygons (see Figure 4). The Measure tool in Imagej was
then used to generate a series of measurements for each
traced feature—area, perimeter, centroid coordinates (X and
Y), aspect ratio (major axis / minor axis), circularity
(4*area/perimeter^2, such that a perfect circle has value of
1 and an increasingly elongated shapes approach a value of
0), and roundness (4pi*area/(pi*major_axis^2, which is also
S82 P. VANVALKENBURGH ET AL.
Figure 4. Features created based on structures visible in lidar ground model of
Kuelap, traced using Imagej.
the inverse of the aspect ratio). These measurements were
then exported as a table and loaded into ArcMap 10.6,
where coordinate values of feature centroids were re-pro-
jected to create a point feature class. The measurements
table from Imagej was then re-joined to this point feature
class, and spatial analyses including hotspot analysis (Getis-
Ord Gi*) were performed on feature attributes. Incremental
Spatial Autocorrelation did not return any peak values, and
Z-scores were above 1.95 for 11.32 m to 69.92 m sampling
distances. Therefore, Getis-Ord Gi* was run using an interval
of 20 m, just over twice the mean diameter (7.3 m) of circular
structures in the sample of measured buildings, ensuring that
all features had at least one neighbor but avoiding oversam-
pling that could have resulted from using a larger interval
in an area with close spacing among structures.
Results
Evaluating the Bare Earth Model
Following automated and manual classification, just over
129,897,000 points remained in the point cloud used to pro-
duce our bare earth model, at a mean density of approxi-
mately 2000 points per square meter. While the absence of
multiple returns resulted in reduced point density in some
of the most forested portions of the site, comparison with
previous maps of Kuelap suggests that we were able to cap-
ture all previously documented surface structures on the
summit of the walled settlement, though we expect that
additional structures remain to be defined beneath the cur-
rently exposed surface (Figure 5). The total number of struc-
tures recorded (421) is nearly identical to the estimate of 420
generated by previous research (Ruiz Estrada 2009; Narváez
Vargas 2013), but the level of detail provided on structural
form is much greater. While we concentrate here only on
the formal dimensions of structures, we should also note
that the model also captures additional walls that define
internal patios and divisions.
Figure 5. Hillshade produced from ground model of Kuelap, with major features
labeled.
At the level of individual walls and buildings, the model’s
resolution is variable. The survey produced dense point cover-
age from the exterior walls of most circular structures, but not
all internal wall surfaces were captured in great detail (see
Figure 3). This pattern holds across both the forested and
unforested areas of the site, suggesting that the transects we
flew across did not provide the coverage necessary to fully
scan interior surfaces. This trend is unsurprising, as many of
the structures incline inwards, obscuring them from aerial
view. Moreover, point density does not appear to be high
enough to resolve fine differences in masonry and individual
building blocks on either the site’s monumental walls or the
walls of smaller domestic structures. For scanning internal
portions of domestic structures and resolving individual
stones, terrestrial laser scanning would provide improved cov-
erage, as would drone lidar with flight plans focused on
increased point density (Kellner et al. 2019). Point densities
on the vertical surface of the site’s monumental external
walls are generally quite high, but they are lower than on the
top of the citadel, with patchy coverage on the wall’s southeast-
ern portion. Here, point density could no doubt be improved
through data collected from lower flights around the exterior
walls, an option we avoided in the field due to safety concerns.
Finally, modern features present on the site surface also
impacted data collection. During our survey, the main
entrance to the citadel was covered with a plastic tarp that
absorbed laser pulses, resulting in a large blank space in the
bare earth model. In addition, while we removed stairways
and handrails from the point cloud during the manual edition
process, low wooden trackways that guide tourist foot traffic

through the site are still clearly visible, as are numerous piles of
stones accumulated during recent conservation work.
Data Analysis
The high spatial resolution of our model provides a means of
examining previously unstudied aspects of architectural lay-
out and construction at Kuelap, beginning with precise esti-
mates of floor area. Among the 421 structures we mapped
on the summit of the citadel, median floor area is 40.53
square meters, with a standard deviation of 16.18 square
meters and three outliers—the large kallanka in the upper
town (237.88 sq m), the tintero/templo mayor (158.29 sq m)
and a single large circular structure 40 m south of entrance
three (126.31 sq m) (see Figure 6). With the outliers removed,
SD drops to 11.06 m. Each of the three large structures are
located in distinct sectors of the site, rather than being clus-
tered in a single district. Indeed, relatively little statistically
significant spatial clustering of either low or high floor area
values is present in the dataset.
The appearance of the tintero and the larger of the two kal-
lankas as hotspots seems to reflect the fact that they have rela-
tively few neighbors at the 20 m sampling interval—a factor
that, at least in the case of the kallanka, is related to its history
as an Inka structure around which previously existing struc-
tures were destroyed in order to make room for an imperial
installation placed atop a ritually important element of the
landscape (exposed bedrock). Elsewhere, two areas with
high-confidence clusters of larger floor area values are a
group of nine structures arranged around an open space
just to the south of the third entrance, among which is one
of the three largest structures in the site. The other is another
set of nine structures that also contain an open space and abut
the eastern exterior wall.
Figure 6. At left, graduated symbols representing variation in building floor area at Kuelap. (symbols not proportional—larger icon = greater floor area); At right, hot
spot analysis of building size.
JOURNAL OF FIELD ARCHAEOLOGY S83
Two clusters of structures have floor areas that are signifi-
cantly smaller. The first is a group of eight in the middle por-
tion of the lower town, near the western external wall. They
do not appear to be arranged around a common open
space. The second is the group atop the raised circular plat-
form at the citadel’s southern tip, as well as three adjacent
structures. The largest structure on the circular platform,
which Narváez (2013) suggests may have been the house of
an elite family because of its size, is not particularly remark-
able for its floor area (51.53 square meters) and it forms part
of the cluster of lower floor area values.
Spatial patterns in building floor areas are mirrored in
building perimeters, which is strongly correlated with floor
area. Both building aspect ratio and roundness measures
(which are the inverse of one another) distinguish the two
kallankas from the site’s circular structures, but neither set
of values clusters in a spatially significant way. More pro-
nounced patterns are evident among circularity indices—
which, indeed, are the attribute whose values are the single
most spatially clustered of the entire dataset. In figure 7,
both “hot” (highly circular buildings—i.e., those with high
circularity indices) and “cold” (structures with exceptionally
low circularity) appear in several areas of the site. In the
southern portion of the lower town, just south of entrances
one and two, a circularity hotspot contains a total of 44 struc-
tures. Near the geographic center of the walled site, two adja-
cent cold spots (containing 9 and 14 structures, respectively)
nearly form a band across the width of the elevated plateau. A
further cold spot is located in the highest portion of the site,
in the circular center of the upper town. Due to its lack of
neighbors and low circularity value (0.562), the kallanka in
the upper town again appears as a singular cold spot. Finally,
an additional cluster is visible just to the north of entrance
number three. Notably, none of the clusters in the floor
S84 P. VANVALKENBURGH ET AL.
Figure 7. At left, graduated symbols representing variation in building circularity values at Kuelap. (Symbols are not proportional—smaller icon = more circular
building). At right, hot spot analysis of building circularity.
area data and the circularity indices significantly overlap with
one another.
In addition to data generated by the Measure tool in Ima-
gej, we should also note that the dataset captures qualitative
differences in structures that are the result of conservation
and archaeological excavation—i.e., the “sharpness” of walls
apparent among structures in the far southern portion of
the model, near the main entrance, along the central tourist
corridor, and in a few isolated areas of the upper town and
northern sector of the lower town. Clusters among circularity
values crosscut areas of differential conservation, suggesting
that these patterns are not the product of recent conservation
efforts or reconstruction but rather that they reflect under-
lying variability in structural form.
Discussion
These two trends—modest clustering of floor area among
small groups of structures and larger clusters of structures
with similar circularity measures can be considered in light
of other trends in architectural data at Kuelap to suggest sev-
eral interpretations regarding the site’s organization and con-
struction sequence. Each should be further tested through
excavation and systematic dating efforts.
The absence of sizable clusters of particularly large or small
houses at Kuelap is a trend previously noted for other Late
Intermediate Period settlements in the region (Guengerich
2014)—one that differs markedly from more marked
patterns of size clustering in sites in the central and southern
Peruvian Andes (Arkush 2017; Arkush 2011; De Marrais
2002). At Monte Viudo, Guengerich finds a statistically sig-
nificant correlation between house size and masonry type, in
which houses with some forms of finely-worked masonry
tend to be slightly larger than houses with more coarse
stone walls. There, masonry type is not correlated with the
remains of higher quality foods or portable material culture,
but still appears convincingly related to social capital. Thus,
while housing in typical Late Intermediate Period Chachapoya
settlements does not demonstrate the kinds of spatial size seg-
regation characteristic of hereditary monarchies or modern
industrial societies, structure size may be interpreted as at
least partially reflective of social status (Blanton 1994; Sivert-
sen 1963; Beardsley, Hall, and Ward 1959). At Kuelap, four
clusters of 8–11 houses with modestly larger and smaller
floor areas may reflect status shared among co-residential
groups, which at least in some cases appear to have shared
common patios. Notably, median floor area among structures
at Kuelap appears to be nearly double that at Monte Viudo,
where mean sizes are reportedly between 17 and 22 sq m
(Guengerich 2014: figure 12), perhaps reflecting substantial
differences in household sizes between the two settlements
(Naroll 1962; LeBlanc 1970; Kramer 1980).
We further interpret large clusters of buildings with simi-
lar circularity indices as reflecting construction by distinct
communities of builders, as well as perhaps major differences
in site chronology. As previous authors have noted, morpho-
logical features of houses often reveal highly localized and
idiosyncratic histories of construction (Blanton 1994; Guen-
gerich 2014). The regularity of architectural form among
Late Intermediate Period Chachapoya settlements (the circu-
lar house, with conical roof, sleeping platform, and central
hearth) suggests a normative construction of the home—a
structure of feeling, if not also certain more explicit norms,
that guided the work of individual builders. Yet each moment
of construction articulated these standards in distinct ways,
reflecting distinct pathways of learning and communities of

Figure 8. Boxplots showing distribution of building floor area and circularity of structures at Kuelap, calculated from features created in Imagej based on lidar ground
model.
practice (Wenger 1999; Minar and Crown 2001; Crown 2007;
Roddick and Stahl 2016). If, as Guengerich (2014) convin-
cingly argues, Chachapoya structures were built not under
the watch of strong authorities that imposed standards on
architects, but rather by groups of builders who introduced
idiosyncrasies into the masonry and layouts of the structures
they erected, we should expect the architectural construction
to vary in time and space due to both drift and innovation.
Under these conditions, we might also expect that subtle differ-
ences in architecture would index chronological differences.
Building circularity is one aspect of architectural style we
might reasonably expect to reflect distinct performances of
architectural norms, reflecting different techniques for
measuring the dimensions of structures, as well as different
standards and expectations of symmetry. At Kuelap, our
data reveal large clusters of buildings with similar circularity
values—two of them in east-to-west swaths extending across
the site, which may reflect its southward and eastward growth
over time, as suggested by Ruiz Estrada (2009). We suggest
that, as new sectors were added to the platform, its exterior
walls may have been expanded out and circular structures
placed atop the platform. In this scenario, each new construc-
tion stage would have been carried out by distinct groups of
builders. In the upper town, where Ruiz’s excavations found
what appears to be the earliest pottery at the site, exposed
bedrock suggests that relatively little fill is present. The circu-
lar arrangement of structures at the southern end of the lower
town, at the highest point of the site, greatly resembles some
smaller hilltop settlements in the middle Utcubamba drainage
that we have documented through pedestrian survey (Rojas
Vega and VanValkenburgh 2017). Here, we find a substantial
group of houses with low circularity values clustered together,
in a manner quite similar to tiered mountaintop settlements
such as Crestón, to the west of the modern town of Chocta-
mal (Rojas Vega and VanValkenburgh 2017). We suggest
that Kuelap may have begun as just such a settlement—a
small hilltop village that gradually expanded into a walled
necropolis whose monumental stone walls, packed with bur-
ials, emulated the form of cliff faces where regional traditions
had long placed their dead (see Bradley, n.d.). We advocate
further stratigraphic excavations to evaluate this proposed
site chronology and history of construction.
Conclusion
Our high-resolution ground model of Kuelap, generated from
drone lidar data, has revealed dimensions of variability in dom-
estic architecture at the site that were obscured in previous
models produced using lower-resolution instrumentation.
JOURNAL OF FIELD ARCHAEOLOGY S85
Spatial analysis of these attributes has, in turn, enabled us to
produce new hypotheses about the history and organization
of the site. Our results illustrate the potential of drone lidar
for enhancing topographic modeling on what Howey and col-
leagues (this volume) call the “safe” side of the spatio-temporal
chart of remote sensing technologies, at high levels of spatial
resolution. In our case study, it is spatial resolution and file
size itself, rather than geographic or temporal scale, that charac-
terize a collection of “big” data. And just as with the more
geographically extensive datasets examined in other papers
within this themed issue, the true potential of big data lies
not in scale itself but in the application of critical analysis to
datasets. Used in a conventional manner, higher resolution
ground models based on drone lidar data risk reifying the site
as a unit of archaeological analysis, under the guise of greater
precision and accuracy (see McCoy, this issue). But examined
critically, models based on lidar data can also reveal meaningful
patterns in archaeological landscapes that were previously
undocumented.
While our experience illustrates the interpretive potential of
high-resolution datasets of archaeological landscapes, it also
outlines several of the challenges and limitations of working
with lidar data collected from UAV platforms—particularly
the instrumental configuration we employed. In the coming
years, innovation (and lowering costs) for autonomous vehicles
and optical sensors, driven in part by the rapid development of
technologies for driverless vehicles, will no doubt provide
additional and more affordable options for instrumentation.
But certain challenges will remain. Among the varieties of
“big” aerial data, lidar is unique because of its potential to
combine very high spatial (and in the case of lower cost,
UAV-mounted platforms, high temporal) resolution with
extensive geographic coverage. As a result, however, lidar data-
sets can be of sizes that are challenging to process with the com-
putational resources available to archaeologists. In the near
future, the tradeoff between spatial resolution and prohibitively
large file sizes will mean that archaeological projects employing
lidar will have to carefully consider their research questions
when choosing instrumentation and data collection par-
ameters. In the more distant future, additional options for auto-
mated processing and classification of data may reduce the size
of these tradeoffs, making it possible for us to handle lidar data-
sets with resolutions of thousands of points per square meter
covering hundreds or thousands of square kilometers.
Acknowledgments
Funding for this research was provided through a grant from the
National Geographic Committee on Research and Exploration (HJ-
S86 P. VANVALKENBURGH ET AL.
044R-17). We would like to thank Jorge Trajo Ramos, Manuel Malaver,
Jorge Chiguala, Jaime Jimenez, José la Torre, Alejandro Cuipal, Alcira
Chavez, Llony Cuipal, Ema Perea Rios, David Blair, Henry Johnson,
and the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society. Cushman’s
research has also been supported by a Presidential Fellowship from
Brown University and a Graduate Research Fellowship from the
National Science Foundation.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on Contributors
Parker VanValkenburgh (Ph.D. 2012, Harvard University) is Assistant
Professor of Anthropology at Brown University, head of the Brown Digi-
tal Archaeology Library and an elected fellow of the Institute at Brown
for Environment and Society. Among other research projects, he co-
directs the Paisajes Arqueológicos de Chachapoyas project with Carol
Rojas Vega and is and is co-editor, with Steven Wernke, of GeoPACHA:
Geospatial Platform for Andean History, Culture, and Archaeology.
K. C. Cushman received her Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
at Brown University and the Institute at Brown for Environment and
Society and is postdoctoral fellow at the Smithsonian Tropical Research
Institute
Luis Jaime Castillo (Ph.D. 2012, University of California, Los Angeles) is
Professor of Archaeology at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru,
directs the San Jose de Moro Archaeological Program and the Digital
Archive of Cultural Heritage. He is Foreign Associate member of the
National Academy of Sciences and a National Geographic Society
Explorer and has served as Vice Minister of Cultural Patrimony and
Minister of Culture in Peru.
Carol Rojas Vega is an archaeological researcher based in Lima Peru and
co-director of the Paisajes Arqueológicos de Chachapoyas Project, as
well as other archaeological projects in Peru.
Carson B. Roberts is a Senior Applications Engineer at Headwall Photo-
nics, Inc. His work concentrates on remote sensing and hyperspectral
and LiDAR data analysis.
Charles Kepler is s a Manufacturing Engineer at Headwall Photonics,
Inc. He is chief pilot for Headwall’s UAV operations, and supervises
the construction and testing of UAV systems.
James Kellner (Ph.D. 2008, University of Georgia) is the Peggy and
Henry D. Sharpe Jr. Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, and
an Assistant Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Brown
University. He is a member of the Science Team of the NASA Global
Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation, which placed a waveform lidar sen-
sor on the International Space Station.
ORCID
Parker VanValkenburgh http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4289-6170
K. C. Cushman http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3464-1151
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