A Technical Note on AI-Driven Archaeological Object Detection in Airborne LiDAR Derivative Data, with CNN as the Leading Technique

Archaeological research fundamentally relies on detecting features to uncover hidden historical information. Airborne (aerial) LiDAR technology has significantly advanced this field by providing high-resolution 3D terrain maps that enable the identification of ancient structures and landscapes with improved accuracy and efficiency. This technical note comprehensively reviews 45 recent studies to critically examine the integration of Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) techniques, particularly Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), with airborne LiDAR derivatives for automated archaeological feature detection. The review highlights the transformative potential of these approaches, revealing their capability to automate feature detection and classification, thus enhancing efficiency and accuracy in archaeological research. CNN-based methods, employed in 32 of the reviewed studies, consistently demonstrate high accuracy across diverse archaeological features. For example, ancient city walls were delineated with 94.12% precision using U-Net, Maya settlements with 95% accuracy using VGG-19, and with an IoU of around 80% using YOLOv8, and shipwrecks with a 92% F1-score using YOLOv3 aided by transfer learning. Furthermore, traditional ML techniques like random forest proved effective in tasks such as identifying burial mounds with 96% accuracy and ancient canals. Despite these significant advancements, the application of ML/DL in archaeology faces critical challenges, including the scarcity of large, labeled archaeological datasets, the prevalence of false positives due to morphological similarities with natural or modern features, and the lack of standardized evaluation metrics across studies. This note underscores the transformative potential of LiDAR and ML/DL integration and emphasizes the crucial need for continued interdisciplinary collaboration to address these limitations and advance the preservation of cultural heritage.