Teams from Cork and Cambridge Universities have been using the recently-developed technology of Lidar (light detecting and ranging), which uses airborne lasers pulsing at 33,000 times a second to scan the landscape and pick up details of relief. “The beam is scanned over the ground in a zigzag manner as the aircraft flies along an accurately planned set of paths”.
Amongst other things they can construct “viewsheds” from the data, indicating which parts of the ancient landscape were intervisible.
More at Times Online
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