Lidar And The Mystery of the Mounds
Channel: F. A. Dowdy
Date: 2022-11-25

For over 200 years explorers and scholars have puzzled over small, low-relief "pimple" mounds found in Arkansas, Louisiana, eastern Texas, eastern Oklahoma and southern Missouri.  Despite a number of theories, scholars have never reached a consensus on how these mounds were formed, and they remain very much a mystery.  In the last few years, however, lidar imagery has become available, and it provides a startling new perspective on these features.  While some of the mounds may be the result of erosion, most appear to defy theories of natural origin and many are located adjacent to known archeological sites.  The implication - that there might be hundreds of thousands of manmade mounds hidden under forest canopy - would require a reevaluation of our understanding of the prehistory of the region.