We are glad to have Marc Bolli (Memorial University/University of Waterloo) and Amanda Crompton (MPIWG/Memorial University) to present their joint work on "Bog, Bush, and Drones: Digital Humanities and Imaging Historic Sites in the Field.” This BBL is related to Amanda’s paper given at Department III’s colloquium last December, entitled "Documenting Impermanence: Five Centuries of Mapping Transient Fishing Stations in Newfoundland, Canada”, and this time we will get to learn more about the technologies they employed and to discuss how drones can help to reveal history from the land itself. Please see below for a detailed description from the speakers:  

Our project queries how digital data derived from low-elevation aerial photography (using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or UAVs) can reveal the ephemeral traces of early modern European occupation on the North Atlantic island of Newfoundland. The landscapes of the French transatlantic cod fishery can be revealed using computational methodologies to read the anthropogenic origins of these landscapes in novel, non-invasive ways. Our presentation will describe the mapping methods that we use to generate aerial imagery, and the challenges of collecting the data in relatively remote environments. Our challenges are as much computational as logistical, however. Once we have acquired imagery with adequate spatial coverage, we use structure-from-motion software to construct orthomosaics and 3D models of the landscapes we map with UAVs, to search for the subtle topographic variation that mark former cod fishing stations. In so doing, our research generates significant aggregate aerial imagery data, as well as large and complex data sets, which often tax the resources of a standard workstation during analysis. As a result, we have also worked with Compute Canada (ACENET) to harness Advanced Research Computing resources for these tasks. We work with both open-source and proprietary software in Compute Canada’s OpenStack environment to markedly improve model processing time and processing capabilities. Ultimately, our digital imagery and computational analysis demonstrates that the contemporary appearance and shape of seemingly abandoned landscapes reflects centuries of use by French fishing crews. Using low-elevation aerial imagery, we can start to decode the patterns of anthropogenic change that fishing crews brought to Newfoundland’s shores.

Marc Bolli is the IT Manager for the Core Research Equipment and Infrastructure Training (CREAIT) Network at Memorial University (currently on research leave). He is also affiliated in a data analytics role in a pharmacoepidemiology project at the University of Waterloo. Marc’s research interests include  the use of aerospace platforms for remote sensing in the social sciences and advanced computational techniques to extract ephemeral signals in data. Marc’s background includes over 20 years of experience in various information technology roles within different research disciplines. When he’s not working on computers and UAVs, he enjoys rock climbing, flying the occasional plane and some wilderness hiking. 

Amanda Crompton is currently a Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow at the MPIWG, as well as an Adjunct Professor with Memorial University of Newfoundland. As a historical archaeologist of the early modern period, her research interests include landscape archaeology, digital data analysis, and the history and archaeology of Indigenous-European encounters and transatlantic French colonialism in eastern Canada.