Airborne LiDAR data in landscape archaeology. An introduction for non-archaeologists

Abstract

The use of airborne LiDAR data has become an essential component of landscape archaeology. This review article provides an understandable introduction to airborne LiDAR data processing specific to archaeology with a holistic view from a technical perspective. It is aimed primarily at researchers, students, and experts whose primary field of study is not archaeology. The article first outlines what the archaeological interest in airborne LiDAR data is and how the data processing workflow is archaeology-specific. The article emphasises that the processing workflow is riddled with archaeology-specific details and presents the key processing steps. These are, in order of their impact on the final result, enhanced visualisation, manual reclassification, filtering of ground points, and interpolation. If a single most important characteristic of airborne LiDAR data processing for archaeology is to be emphasised, it is that archaeologists need an archaeology-specific DEM for their work.