Characterisation of Terrain Variations of an Underwater Ancient Town in Qiandao Lake

The underwater ancient town of Chunan is of great importance in archaeology and tourism. Hence, the efficient mapping and monitoring of the topographical changes in this town are essential. An attractive choice for the efficient mapping of underwater archaeology is the multibeam echo sounder system (MBES). The MBES has several advantages including noncontact survey, high precision, and low cost. In this study, the topographical changes of the ancient town under Qiandao Lake were quantitatively assessed on the basis of time-series MBES data collected in 2002 and 2015. First, the iterative closest point (ICP) algorithm was applied to eliminate the coordinate deviations between two point sets. Second, the robust estimation method was used to analyse the characterisations of the terrain variations of the town on the basis of the differences between the two matched point sets. Obvious topographical changes ranging from −0.89 m to 0.88 m were observed in a number of local areas in the town. On the global scale, the mean absolute value of the depth change in the town was merely 0.12 m, which indicated a weak global deformation pattern. The experiment proved the effectiveness of applying MBES data to analyse the deformation of the ancient town. The results are beneficial to the study of underwater ancient towns and the development of protection strategies.

[1]  J. Clarke.  Dynamic motion residuals in swath sonar data: Ironing out the creases , 2003 .

[2]  N. C. Flemming,et al.  Archaeology of the continental shelf: Marine resources, submerged landscapes and underwater archaeology , 2008 .

[3]  Henning Matthiesen,et al.  A Ticking Clock? Preservation and Management of Greenland’s Archaeological Heritage in the Twenty-First Century , 2018, Conservation and Management of Archaeological Sites.

[4]  Dominique Collon,et al.  The Bronze Age Shipwreck at Ulu Burun: 1986 Campaign , 1989, American Journal of Archaeology.

[5]  Jens Auer,et al.  The ‘Gresham Ship’: an interim report on a 16th-century wreck from Princes Channel, Thames Estuary , 2007 .

[6]  Suzanne J.M.H. Hulscher,et al.  The estimation of sea floor dynamics from bathymetric surveys of a sand wave area , 2009 .

[7]  Niklas Eriksson,et al.  Mars (1564): the initial archaeological investigations of a great 16th‐century Swedish warship , 2017 .

[8]  C. Richard Bates,et al.  Geophysical Methods for Wreck‐Site Monitoring: the Rapid Archaeological Site Surveying and Evaluation (RASSE) programme , 2011 .

[9]  L. Mayer,et al.  Shallow-water imaging multibeam sonars: A new tool for investigating seafloor processes in the coastal zone and on the continental shelf , 1996 .

[10]  Rory Quinn,et al.  Using Multibeam Echo‐Sounder Data to Identify Shipwreck Sites: archaeological assessment of the Joint Irish Bathymetric Survey data , 2011 .

[11]  Gianna Fabi,et al.  Using a Multibeam Echosounder to Monitor AN Artificial Reef , 2015 .

[12]  Maarten G. Kleinhans,et al.  Processes controlling the dynamics of compound sand waves in the North Sea, Netherlands , 2005 .

[13]  Christian Winter,et al.  Development of subaqueous barchanoid-shaped dunes due to lateral grain size variability in a tidal inlet channel of the Danish Wadden Sea: DEVELOPMENT OF BARCHANOID-SHAPED DUNES , 2005 .

[14]  Thomas W. Stafford,et al.  Pre-Clovis occupation 14,550 years ago at the Page-Ladson site, Florida, and the peopling of the Americas , 2016, Science Advances.

[15]  W. Kenneth Stewart,et al.  Multisensor visualization for underwater archaeology , 1991, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications.

[16]  Giovanni Besio,et al.  Modeling sand wave characteristics on the Belgian Continental Shelf and in the Calais-Dover Strait , 2007 .

[17]  Blas L. Valero-Garcés,et al.  Sediment sources and siltation in mountain reservoirs : a case study from the Central Spanish Pyrenees , 1999 .

[18]  Suzanne J.M.H. Hulscher,et al.  Spatial differences in sand wave dynamics between the Amsterdam and the Rotterdam region in the Southern North Sea , 2011 .

[19]  I. Nygren,et al.  Terrain navigation for underwater vehicles using the correlator method , 2004, IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering.

[20]  Marco Malagodi,et al.  Study of archaeological underwater finds: deterioration and conservation , 2010 .

[21]  Jonathan Adams,et al.  4D modelling of low visibility Underwater Archaeological excavations using multi-source photogrammetry in the Bulgarian Black Sea , 2018, Journal of Archaeological Science.

[22]  Joshua J. Wells,et al.  Sea-level rise and archaeological site destruction: An example from the southeastern United States using DINAA (Digital Index of North American Archaeology) , 2017, PloS one.

[23]  Kai Zhang,et al.  Using robust correlation matching to estimate sand-wave migration in Monterey Submarine Canyon, California , 2016 .

[24]  Kieran Westley,et al.  Archaeological Applications of Low‐Cost Integrated Sidescan Sonar/Single‐Beam Echosounder Systems in Irish Inland Waterways , 2017 .

[25]  P. Iampietro,et al.  Twenty-nine months of geomorphic change in upper Monterey Canyon (2002-2005) , 2007 .

[26]  Jared D. Abraham,et al.  Spatial distribution of major and trace elements in shallow reservoir sediments: an example from Lake Waco, Texas , 1998 .

[27]  Brian D. Andrews,et al.  More than a century of bathymetric observations and present-day shallow sediment characterization in Belfast Bay, Maine, USA: implications for pockmark field longevity , 2011 .

[28]  David M. Kennedy,et al.  Accounting for uncertainty in volumes of seabed change measured with repeat multibeam sonar surveys , 2015 .

[29]  Kai Zhang,et al.  Simplified calibration method for multibeam footprint displacements due to non-concentric arrays , 2020 .

[30]  C. Briese,et al.  Airborne laser bathymetry – detecting and recording submerged archaeological sites from the air , 2013 .

[31]  Norimitsu Sakagami,et al.  Discovery of Iron Grapnel Anchors in Early Modern Ryukyu and Management of Underwater Cultural Heritage in Okinawa, Japan , 2016 .