We are deploying our advanced drone LiDAR and photogrammetry systems to the Belmont Estate in Grenada help reveal traces of a historic landscape of enslavement. We are working closely with colleagues within the School of History, Classics and Archaeology and the owners of the Belmont Estate in Grenada on a project to map the historical landscape on the estate using our latest airborne laser-scanning and photogrammetry systems. The project aims to reveal and document features within the estate's landscape associated with Scotland's historical slave trade. Assisted by a single contemporary painting of the estate dating to 1821, the geospatial data acquired will allow the physical layout of the estate at the time of the colony to be reconstructed. Funded by a Munro Research Grant, this work will lay the foundation for a long-term community-led research project, that focuses on the Scottish links and role in the Transatlantic Slave Trade and Caribbean Plantation economy on aspects such as identity and kin, social, and political interconnections. Fieldwork was successfully completed in early December 2023, deploying our Matrice 300 RTK drone with L1 LiDAR system to create a digital surface model of the estate, along with a Mavic 3 Multispectral lightweight drone system to provide additional photogrammetric capability to scan and model the surviving colonial era architecture. While on the estate we were also privileged to spend some time with the exceedingly knowledgeable and enthusiastic estate staff, and to engage with the wider community through a number of outreach events. Find out more about the Belmont Estate today This article was published on 2024-06-25
