Identify and Record Archaeological Remains under Forests Using LiDAR Data: Method and Limits

Since more than ten years, researches about stone remains under forest have been carried out in the Chatillonnais (Cote-d'On France). The survey's carried out up to date consisted of a systematic GNSS survey of the archaeological features. These surveys were completed in 2012 by a LiDAR acquisition over 400km(2), funded by Para Nationaux de France (PNF). This paper aims to present the approach developed within the project to process and record the archaeological data detected with the LiDAR. The challenge is to homogenize the vectorization and the recording of each identified structures (from the sets of images derived from the LiDAR data) by the different researchers. For the implementation of this method a test of vectorization was realized on the same geographical area by eight researchers. The aim of this test is to identify the vectorization biases and to propose a methodological process associating the visualization indexes used; the type of remains to be detected and their topographic location and recording methodology (spatial database, took of vectorization, etc.) connected to the survey methodology.