Native American Landscapes
The Native American Cultural Landscape project in the Archaeology Research Center at USC is focused on the preservation of Native American pictograph sites in Southern California. This project is directed by USC professor Lynn Swartz Dodd and student research associates from Religion, Archaeology, and Anthropology. The current student research leader is Archaeology major Lucy Harrington. Our goal is to create resources that will assist tribes, conservators and researchers to preserve the endangered heritage landscape of southern California. We are doing this by testing ways to remove graffiti with lasers and by creating an interactive GIS database that includes maps and mobile light images (or polynomial texture maps).
This project is a collaboration of USC's Archaeology Research Center, Religion department, West Semitic Research Project, and the Department of Chemistry. Our collaborators outside of the Trojan community include pictograph expert Steven Freers, members of the Pechanga and San Luis Rey tribes, the Motte-Rimrock Reserve of the UC Natural Reserve System, physicist Dr. M.H. Abraham and Claire Dean, among others.
So far, this project has been presented at the Spring 2007 Undergraduate Research Symposium at USC, the 2008 USC Stevens Institute Innovator's Showcase, the 2008 Society for California Archaeology Northern Data Sharing Meeting at the University of California at Santa Cruz, and the 2008 Southern California Conference for Undergraduate Research at California Polytechnic University at Pomona. In Spring, 2009 we will present our research at the Society for Applied Anthropology annual meeting, the American Rock Art Research Association annual meeting, the Society for California Archaeology annual meeting and the Computer Applications in Archaeology international conference. We hope to further collaboration with archaeologists, conservators, researchers and Native Americans in California.
Posted Wednesday, December 17, 2008