Intra-site Digital Documentation of the Ancient Maya city of Palenque, Mexico

Since archaeological and historical sites occur in relatively restricted areas, they are non-renewable resources, and like natural resources, are sensitive to human and natural intervention and should be cared for, curated, and preserved for local, national, and international communities. Unfortunately, over the last two decades, climate change, growing political instability, and looting have led to the deterioration of numerous Mesoamerican archaeological sites. In this scenario, digital documentation and remote sensing technologies become invaluable resources to record, monitor, and preserve the diverse Maya cultural heritage of the Southern Mexican state of Chiapas. Current efforts in digitizing and mapping archaeological sites in Mesoamerica mostly use an inter-site approach that leverages airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR). Nonetheless, the high cost of commercial LiDAR and its current limits in capturing excavated vertical structures urged us to explore alternative approaches to digital documentation able to inform site monitoring and physical conservation and to develop multimodal 3-D survey workflows that can be adopted throughout Mesoamerica. This paper thus presents the preliminary results of our intra-site digital documentation work at the World Heritage site of Palenque, Mexico. It also discusses the potential of integrating intra-site and inter-site digital documentation technologies, such as Unmanned Aerial Systems, image-based modeling, terrestrial laser scanning, and drone-based airborne LiDAR with ground truthing and physical conservation interventions to foster built heritage interpretation, conservation, and preservation in Mexico and in other countries with a high concentration of heritage sites but limited research funding.