Edward Henry

Colorado State University, Anthropology, Faculty Member

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I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Colorado State University (CSU). As an archaeological anthropologist I am interested in the ways societies shaped, and were shaped by, the landscapes they inhabited. My research is primarily focused on eastern North America, where I use methods from geophysics, geoarchaeology, and chronological modeling to examine the integration of pre-Contact Native American landscape modification and interaction within the social, economic, and political institutions of small-scale societies. At CSU, I serve as founder and director of the CRAG (Center for Research in Archaeogeophysics and Geoarchaeology).
Address: Department of Anthropology & Geography
Campus Delivery 1787
Colorado State University
Fort Collins, CO 80523-1787

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Large-scale medieval urbanism traced by UAV–lidar in highland Central Asia

by Jack Berner and Edward Henry

Nature, 2024

Aerial light detection and ranging (lidar) has emerged as a powerful technology for mapping urban... more Aerial light detection and ranging (lidar) has emerged as a powerful technology for mapping urban archaeological landscapes, especially where dense vegetation obscures site visibility1,2. More recently, uncrewed aerial vehicle/drone lidar scanning has markedly improved the resolution of three-dimensional point clouds, allowing for the detection of slight traces of structural features at centimetres of detail across large archaeological sites, a method particularly useful in areas such as mountains, where rapid deposition and erosion irregularly bury and expose archaeological remains3. Here we present the results of uncrewed aerial vehicle–lidar surveys in Central Asia, conducted at two recently discovered archaeological sites in southeastern Uzbekistan: Tashbulak and Tugunbulak. Situated at around 2,000–2,200 m above sea level, these sites illustrate a newly documented geography of large, high-altitude urban centres positioned along the mountainous crossroads of Asia’s medieval Silk Routes (6th–11th century CE (Common Era)4,5. Although hidden by centuries of surface processes, our pairing of very-high-resolution surface modelling with semiautomated feature detection produces a detailed plan of monumental fortifications and architecture spanning 120 ha at Tugunbulak, thereby demonstrating one of the largest highland urban constellations in premodern Central Asia. Documentation of extensive urban infrastructure and technological production among medieval communities in Central Asia’s mountains—a crucial nexus for Silk Road trade networks6—provides a new perspective on the participation of highland populations in the economic, political and social formation of medieval Eurasia.

Reimagining the Development of Downtown Cahokia Using Remote Sensing Visualizations from the Western Edge of the Grand Plaza

by John Grant Stauffer, Seth B . Grooms, and Edward Henry

Land, 2023

The distribution of mounds, plazas, and defensive palisades associated with Cahokia Mounds State ... more The distribution of mounds, plazas, and defensive palisades associated with Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site (CMSHS) defines the core urban environment of Eastern North America’s first American Indian city. The large mounds surrounding Cahokia’s centrally located Grand Plaza, including the palisades that enclose them, are referred to as Downtown Cahokia. In this portion of the site, archaeologists have identified material culture (e.g., ceramics), earthen fills to level the plaza, and several earthen mound constructions. These findings suggest an occupational history for the area that occurred over the 9th–14th centuries CE, with the emergence of plaza delineation and earthwork construction beginning in the early 11th century CE. In sum, Downtown Cahokia and its Grand Plaza are considered by archaeologists to be a vibrant space characterized by ongoing American Indian transformations to an early metropolitan landscape. We conducted magnetometer and electromagnetic induction surveys at the western edge of the Grand Plaza. When compared with the LiDAR-derived visualizations we generated from this portion of the site, our aerial and terrestrial remote sensing data offered new information on the nature and sequence of monument construction in Downtown Cahokia, as well as architectural changes in domestic and special-use structures. These multi-scalar and complementary remote sensing datasets allowed us, without excavating, to trace important sequences of change in Downtown Cahokia’s history.

Keywords: Cahokia Mounds; USA; landscape archaeology; historic aerial photographs; LiDAR; magnetic gradiometry; electromagnetic induction

Edward Henry

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