LiDAR, proximal sensing, and data visualization at the Maya city of Palenque and its surrounding region

Airborne LiDAR has revolutionized archaeological research, especially in the densely forested regions of the Tropics. In the Maya Area Lowlands, LiDAR data have allowed archaeologists to focus on regional systems and identify new settlements while reassessing the extension of previously identified ones. This is also the case in the Classic (circa 250-900 AD) Maya city of Palenque, Mexico, where we recently deployed LiDAR to map the city and its surrounding region. In this paper, we assess the capability of LiDAR and 3D data to enhance our knowledge of Palenque and of its immediate surroundings and, when combined with architectural analysis, to answer specific research questions. Specifically, we performed intra-site 3D documentation of the city center via drone image-based modeling and terrestrial LiDAR. Our 3D documentation became essential to record excavations and archaeological artifacts, and to advance understanding of the construction of the iconic Temple of the Inscriptions. We combined our results in the Palenque 3D Archaeological Atlas, a WebGL based online 3D visualization platform that efficiently merge and contextualize geospatial data captured at the site. We conclude that our workflow from LiDAR to interactive web visualization can be successfully adapted to other studies within and beyond the Maya Area.