LIDAR helps scientists discover a surprising 1,000-year-old farming community at the Menominee River

A team of Dartmouth scientists recently uncovered a 1,000-year-old farming settlement along Michigan’s Menominee River, thanks to drone-mounted LIDAR technology. Their survey covered 330 acres of forest in the Upper Peninsula and is believed to represent only 40% of the full site. The discovery challenges long-held assumptions about the scale and sophistication of precolonial Indigenous agriculture in North America. Here’s everything you need to know.

Ancient agriculture on a surprising scale

The settlement, located at a site in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula called Anaem Omot, revealed an extensive network of agricultural ridges and structures once hidden beneath dense forest. Radiocarbon dating confirmed continuous human activity in the area for over 600 years. According to the team, nothing in the previous archaeological literature suggested the existence of farming systems this large or communally organized. “The scale of this agricultural system is ten times larger than what was previously estimated,” noted lead researcher Madeleine McLeester.

LIDAR technology reveals the landscape

At the request of Menominee tribal authorities, the Dartmouth team utilized this technology to survey the Anaem Omot site, which had been intermittently studied since the 1950s but had never been surveyed with LIDAR. Unlike traditional excavations that search for artifacts underground, drone LIDAR scans from above using laser pulses that penetrate the forest canopy, revealing hidden structures and topography.

Jesse Casana, senior author of the study and a professor of anthropology, emphasized the advantages of drone LIDAR over conventional aerial surveys, noting it provides significantly more detail by flying lower and closer to the surface. “The resolution of the data is usually too low to see many archaeological features,” Casana explained. “Drone LIDAR enables us to collect the same kind of data but at a much higher resolution.” She described LIDAR as a powerful tool for archaeology in forested regions, where dense vegetation has long obscured key sites. He also noted that earlier LIDAR data (typically captured from high-flying aircraft) often lacked the resolution needed to detect detailed features. The team’s drone-based approach overcame this limitation, making the discovery possible.

How did LIDAR make a difference?

LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) uses laser pulses to scan and map terrain, even beneath dense forest canopies. Unlike traditional imagery, which cannot penetrate vegetation, drone-mounted LIDAR creates high-resolution topographic maps that reveal subtle archaeological features hidden from view.

This technology allowed researchers to uncover far more than just ancient farmland. The scans revealed a circular ceremonial “dance ring,” remnants of what may have been a colonial trading post, and two 19th-century logging camps. The raised agricultural ridges, arranged in quilt-like patterns without clear alignment to natural features, suggest a decentralized farming system shaped by individual farmers. LIDAR also identified burial mounds (some previously thought destroyed), offering a deeper understanding of the area’s cultural and historical layers.

This groundbreaking find would not have been possible without LIDAR. The technology’s ability to “see through” forests has opened new frontiers in archaeology, especially in areas previously inaccessible or overlooked. As more researchers adopt drone-mounted LIDAR, the potential to uncover hidden histories, like that of the ancestral Menominee farming community, continues to grow.