In Mexico, LiDAR is clearing archaeological sites on all terrains

"At first, it seemed like magic," recalls archaeologist Robert Rosenswig. In 2010, the professor in the Department of Anthropology at the State University of New York at Albany packed up his compass, machete, and sketchbook and flew a plane equipped with a LiDAR system—the equivalent of sonar or radar that would work with a laser—over Izapa. The archaeological site is located on the slopes of the Sierra Madre Mountains in the tropical Soconusco region of Chiapas, on the present-day border between Mexico and Guatemala.

The capital of a kingdom founded around 700 BC and ruled over 20,000 inhabitants—likely of the Zoque ethnic group—Izapa was known for its sumptuous carved stelae, its literate society, and its pyramids over 20 meters high, built several centuries before the great Mayan cities. Using LiDAR imagery, Robert Rosenswig's team was able to discover a myriad of structures buried beneath the vegetation.

"We marked the mounds with GPS points and then went to the site. After a phase of trial and error, we found more than 1,000 archaeological monuments," the scientist enthuses. "We mapped a complete kingdom, with its hierarchical political organization, division of labor, and agricultural terraces. We discovered, among other things, that 41 monumental centers of the Izapa kingdom were aligned with the Tacana and Tajumulco volcanoes, which suggests that astrologers, urban planners, and architects of the time worked in coordination," he emphasizes.

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