Case study - Stonehenge

Bewley, Crutchley & Shell (2005)

• Was one of the earliest uses of LiDAR in British Archaeology

• Applied to an open, well studied landscape

Locational correction

• Located errors in the archaeological record and revealed discrepancies with the existing feature locations

New sites and extensions

• Identified entirely new field systems and extensions which completed the layout of small regular prehistoric fields

• Many of the new discoveries were a result of the ability to  digitally strip tree canopy and produce a bare-earth DTM

Survival of supposedly levelled features

• Important for heritage management/conservation

• Many sites recorded only as crop-marks and believed to have been entirely flattened by ploughing were revealed by LiDAR to still survive as slight earthworks,

Viewshed analysis

• By modelling the landscape without modern trees and buildings, we can carefully reveal relationships between monuments that would have been visible in antiquity

• E.g the ‘Monarch of the Plain Barrow’ was constructed at the junction of two ridge-lines where (when vegetation was removed) could be seen from Stonehenge