Old, Meet New: Drones, High-Tech Camera Revamp Archaeology

Old, Meet New: Drones, High-Tech Camera Revamp Archaeology

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Scanning an empty field that once housed a Shaker village in New Hampshire, Jesse Casana had come in search of the foundations of stone buildings, long-forgotten roadways and other remnants of this community dating to the 1790s.

But instead of a trowel and shovel, Casana and his Dartmouth College colleague Chad Hill are using a drone equipped with a thermal imaging camera and mapping instruments. The camera can identify remnants of buildings and other structures up to several feet below the surface, since the temperatures of that brick or stone material is often warmer than the soil around it. And by using the drone, the researchers can survey an area in minutes that might take months with traditional methods.

“If you look, you see a flat field but below it there are big stone walls. There are cellars. There is a big old well, all kinds of stuff you can’t see on the ground,” Casana said of a community that once housed nearly 100 buildings but was sold in the 1920s and is now an outdoor history museum. “Those things have different thermal properties. If you capture an image at the right moment, you can see it — which is amazing.”