This exploratory, half-day workshop aims to lay the foundations of shared reference to assist in the archaeological interpretation of airborne laserscanning (ALS) data. The principle of the approach we wish to develop through this workshop is closely linking the practices related to land use patterns (agriculture, forestry, hunting, habitation, movement) with topographic anomalies highlighted by the LiDAR data. The objective is to develop a repository to match between our mental models of topographic features that could be created by certain activities and potentially corresponding features as they appear in ALS data, taking advantage of proven cases in each participant’s case studies. Working from these principles, the aim is to develop an ontology for archaeological interpretation of LiDAR data that connects past activities, post-creation or formation processes, and the properties of the digital model. Participants in the workshop should come with examples of corresponding activities or land use and ALS terrain model features from their own work. Evidence for examples of activities and land use might include historical documents, ethnographic analogies, legal documents, images, etc. The group will compile a shared repository of examples and develop a shared draft of the ontology during the workshop.
