Austin “Chad” Hill, 2015–2016 CAORC Post Doctorate Fellow |
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| Chad Hill preparing to launch a fixed wing drone at Feifa, Jordan 2014 (Photo by Morag Kersel) |
| Chad Hill is an archaeologist who specializes in the rapidly developing field of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)-based surveying. He uses aerial photography and 3D photogrammetry to identify archaeological sites, document excavations, and visualize landscapes.
His ACOR-CAORC fellowship supported him in the spring and summer of 2016 to make a high resolution aerial survey of extant archaeological features in the Eastern Badia of Jordan, an area of approximately 32 km2. His work builds on and continues earlier research in this region by Dr. Yorke Rowan of the University of Chicago and Dr. Gary Rollefson of Whitman College in Washington. His research produces a great deal of data and he proposes an innovative method to analyze the images resulting from the drone survey. His data will be placed on a crowd-source platform called “Micromappers” that will be hosted by the Qatar Computing Research Institute, and volunteers with an interest in archaeology will be able to explore the data set and identify archaeological structures. The results will eventually by collated, reviewed and checked by Dr. Hill and Dr. Rowan. Austin (Chad) Hill is co-director of the Landscapes of the Dead Project. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Connecticut. Read more about Dr. Hill and another ongoing research project with drone mapping in Jordan at https://experiment.com/projects/archaeology-drones-mapping-neolithic-structures-in-the-black-desert-jordan. |