Following the unexpected passing of the PI, the funding and duration of the grant were significantly reduced, leading to a contraction in the scope and scale of planned research activities. Nevertheless, the vast majority of the original objectives and ambitions have been successfully achieved.
Over the course of this project, airborne lidar surveys were conducted over several thousand square kilometres of Southeast Asia, bringing remote sensing coverage in the region to a total of more than 7,500 km², embracing key archaeological landscapes in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Indonesia. New data and earlier acquisitions have been integrated into a unified geospatial framework, standardised for analysis, and made available through dedicated web platforms, enabling collaborative work both with established local partners and with the international research community.
A specialised data science laboratory has been established in Paris to support systematic collaboration between archaeologists and AI researchers. This research unit has carried out the effective application of state-of-the-art computer vision models, and developed novel deep learning benchmarks and methodologies. In so doing, it has pushed forward archaeology as an active driver of innovation in machine learning and remote sensing, and demonstrated the generalisability of these models for broader research domains, including such fields as environmental science.
The project has laid the groundwork for an integrated archaeological and ecological agenda, building on its unprecedented-in-scale remote sensing acquisitions in the region along with newly-developed machine learning tools. Initial analysis has started the process of quantifying the development of early societies and the long-term impact and ecological legacy of human activity on tropical environments. Final interpretation, along with the required field verification and targeted archaeological surveys, will be carried out through successor projects.
