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A six-month LiDAR and geospatial mapping project has begun at Lakkundi in Gadag district, Karnataka, to locate monuments still buried beneath the surface.
It is being carried out under a Memorandum of Understanding between the Karnataka Department of Archaeology, Museums and Heritage and the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Bengaluru.
The survey uses non-invasive methods — LiDAR, GIS mapping, remote sensing and Ground Penetrating Radar — so that the archaeological landscape can be studied without excavation or damage to standing structures.
Lakkundi is associated with the Western Chalukyas or Kalyana Chalukyas of the 10th to 12th centuries CE, and local tradition describes it as a village of '101 wells and 101 temples'.
The Lakkundi Group of Monuments has been proposed for the UNESCO World Heritage tentative list, and the state plans an open-air museum at the site.
LiDAR — Light Detection and Ranging — fires rapid laser pulses at the ground from an aircraft or drone and measures the time each pulse takes to return. Because many pulses slip between leaves and branches, the returns can be filtered to strip out vegetation and produce a bare-earth terrain model far more precise than anything visible from the air. On that model, the faint geometry of buried walls, platforms, tank bunds and street grids shows up as subtle differences in ground height that the eye cannot pick out on the ground itself. Ground Penetrating Radar works differently and complements it: it sends radio waves downwards and reads the reflections from boundaries between materials, so it detects structures below the surface rather than shaping the surface itself. Together with GIS mapping, which layers these datasets against inscriptions, revenue maps and known monuments, they let archaeologists decide where to dig — instead of digging to find out.
Simple Analogy: LiDAR is like brushing the dust off a relief carving to reveal the pattern in the stone; Ground Penetrating Radar is like tapping a wall to find out where the hollow is behind it.
GS Paper 1 > Indian Heritage and Culture > Architecture from ancient to modern times; GS Paper 3 > Science and Technology > Applications
General Awareness > History and Culture
General Awareness > Art, Culture and Current Affairs
Light Detection and Ranging — a remote-sensing method that uses laser pulses to measure distance and build high-resolution bare-earth terrain models, revealing faint surface traces of buried structures.
A technique that sends radio waves into the ground and reads reflections from boundaries between materials, detecting buried walls, voids and layers without excavation.
A Deccan dynasty of roughly the 10th to 12th centuries CE, named after its capital Kalyana, whose temple architecture forms a distinct stage between the Badami Chalukya and Hoysala traditions.
A Bengaluru-based interdisciplinary research institute, partnering the Karnataka archaeology department on the Lakkundi survey.
The inventory of properties a State Party intends to nominate for World Heritage status; inclusion on it is a required first step before a formal nomination.