About

Ian Lindsay is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Purdue University, having joined the faculty in 2007 after receiving his Ph.D. from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2006. His research focuses on the origins of complex societies in the South Caucasus, with particular emphasis on ceramic analysis, landscapes as media for political authority, household archaeology, and the use of GIS and remote sensing technologies. Lindsay is co-director of Project ArAGATS, an international collaborative expedition involving scholars from multiple institutions, which investigates archaeological sites in Armenia to understand the development of sociopolitical institutions during the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age. His work in the Tsaghkahovit Plain of northwestern Armenia over the past 15 years has concentrated on domestic contexts at hilltop fortresses, exploring the role of local communities in the formation of political structures. Recently, he has initiated a survey project in the upper Kasakh River valley to study fortified landscapes and their relation to militarism, warfare, social cohesion, and identity from the 3rd to 1st millennia BC. This project employs drone technology for high-resolution aerial imaging and 3D modeling to analyze archaeological landscapes. Lindsay has served as past president of the American Research Institute of the South Caucasus (ARISC) and has received funding from organizations such as the National Science Foundation, Fulbright, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation. His contributions include numerous publications on archaeological survey methods, Bronze and Iron Age societies, and political organization in the South Caucasus.

Research topics

• Archaeology
• Computer Science
• Geography
• Telecommunications
• Optoelectronics
• Database
• World Wide Web
• Composite material
• Chemical engineering
• Materials science
• Nanotechnology
• Biology
• Remote sensing
• Ecology
• Physical geography

Selected publications

• Self-Supervised Large Scale Point Cloud Completion for Archaeological Site Restoration

  2025-06-10 · 2 citations

  article

  Point cloud completion helps restore partial incomplete point clouds suffering occlusions. Current self-supervised methods fail to give high fidelity completion for large objects with missing surfaces and unbalanced distribution of available points. In this paper, we present a novel method for restoring large-scale point clouds with limited and unbalanced ground-truth. Using rough boundary annotations for a region of interest, we project the original point clouds into a multiple-center-of-projection (MCOP) image, where fragments are projected to images of 5 channels (RGB, depth, and rotation). Completion of the original point cloud is reduced to inpainting the missing pixels in the MCOP images. Due to lack of complete structures and an unbalanced distribution of existing parts, we develop a self-supervised scheme which learns to infill the MCOP image with points resembling existing "complete" patches. Special losses are applied to further enhance the regularity and consistency of completed MCOP images, which is mapped back to 3D to form final restoration. Extensive experiments demonstrate the superiority of our method in completing 600+ incomplete and unbalanced archaeological structures in Peru.

  PublisherDOI

• Self-Supervised Large Scale Point Cloud Completion for Archaeological Site Restoration

  ArXiv.org · 2025-03-06

  preprintOpen access

  Point cloud completion helps restore partial incomplete point clouds suffering occlusions. Current self-supervised methods fail to give high fidelity completion for large objects with missing surfaces and unbalanced distribution of available points. In this paper, we present a novel method for restoring large-scale point clouds with limited and imbalanced ground-truth. Using rough boundary annotations for a region of interest, we project the original point clouds into a multiple-center-of-projection (MCOP) image, where fragments are projected to images of 5 channels (RGB, depth, and rotation). Completion of the original point cloud is reduced to inpainting the missing pixels in the MCOP images. Due to lack of complete structures and an unbalanced distribution of existing parts, we develop a self-supervised scheme which learns to infill the MCOP image with points resembling existing "complete" patches. Special losses are applied to further enhance the regularity and consistency of completed MCOP images, which is mapped back to 3D to form final restoration. Extensive experiments demonstrate the superiority of our method in completing 600+ incomplete and unbalanced archaeological structures in Peru.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Bone uranium and lead concentrations in adults from Fallujah, Iraq

  Environmental Pollution · 2025-08-07 · 1 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Agro-pastoral landscape fire suppression in the steppes of the Bronze and Iron Age southern Caucasus.

  HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe) · 2024-08-28

  article

  International audience

  Publisher

• MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACH TO AN INFREQUENT PROBLEM: RUPTURED SINUS OF VALSALVA ANEURYSM

  Journal of the American College of Cardiology · 2023-03-01

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Free and Low-Cost Aerial Remote Sensing in Archaeology

  Advances in Archaeological Practice · 2023-04-19 · 8 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  ABSTRACT Recent years have seen the rapid expansion of airborne and spaceborne remote-sensing products adopted by archaeologists for interpreting ancient landscapes and managing heritage resources. A growing and increasingly specialized literature attests to the promise and availability of commercial and publicly funded satellite imagery, as well as UAV-mounted sensors across a range of resolutions and price points. In the South Caucasus (including the countries of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia), a growing commitment to landscape approaches in archaeology is stimulating the adoption of satellite remote sensing as an important new tool for identifying and managing archaeological resources while tracing the impact of historic land-use alterations in survey areas. Nevertheless, budgetary challenges and a lack of training opportunities among international partners and heritage organizations outside of the funding streams of large academic institutions can lead to widening technological gulfs in the discipline that reinforce colonial relationships. Building on recent technical articles covering specific imagery datasets, this article aims to address this by providing a general review of free or low-cost remotely sensed datasets available to archaeologists, with the aim of broadening awareness of these important tools and their vocabularies, and illustrating them with recent published examples from the South Caucasus.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Monitoring Heritage At Risk:

  Archaeopress Publishing Ltd eBooks · 2023-03-01 · 1 citations

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Shedding Light on Capillary-Based Backscattering Interferometry

  Sensors · 2022-03-10 · 5 citations

  articleOpen access

  Capillary-based backscattering interferometry has been used extensively as a tool to measure molecular binding via interferometric refractive index sensing. Previous studies have analysed the fringe patterns created in the backscatter direction. However, polarisation effects, spatial chirps in the fringe pattern and the practical impact of various approximations, and assumptions in existing models are yet to be fully explored. Here, two independent ray tracing approaches are applied, analysed, contrasted, compared to experimental data, and improved upon by introducing explicit polarisation dependence. In doing so, the significance of the inner diameter, outer diameter, and material of the capillary to the resulting fringe pattern and subsequent analysis are elucidated for the first time. The inner diameter is shown to dictate the fringe pattern seen, and therefore, the effectiveness of any dechirping algorithm, demonstrating that current dechirping methods are only valid for a subset of capillary dimensions. Potential improvements are suggested in order to guide further research, increase sensitivity, and promote wider applicability.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Project ArAGATS Kasakh Valley Archaeological Survey, Armenia: Report of the 2014–2017 Seasons

  American Journal of Archaeology · 2022-03-15 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  During four field seasons spanning 2014 through 2017, Project ArAGATS (Archaeology and Geography of Ancient Transcaucasian Societies) expanded our long-term research on the origins and development of complex political systems in the South Caucasus with a comprehensive study of the upper Kasakh River valley in north-central Armenia. The Kasakh Valley Archaeological Survey employed both systematic transect survey of 43 km2 and extensive satellite- and drone-based reconnaissance to accommodate the complex topography of the Lesser Caucasus and the impacts of Soviet-era land amelioration. Though our survey was animated by questions related to the chronology and distribution of Bronze and Iron Age fortifications and cemeteries, we also recorded Paleolithic sites stretching back to the earliest human settlement of the Caucasus, Early Bronze Age surface finds, and historic landscape modifications. Concurrent to the survey, members of the ArAGATS team carried out test excavations at select settlement sites and associated burials, and a series of wetland core extractions, with the goals of affirming site occupation sequences and setting them within their environmental context. This report provides an overview of the results of these multidisciplinary activities.1

  PublisherDOI

• An Analysis of Semicircular Channel Backscattering Interferometry through Ray Tracing Simulations

  Sensors · 2022-06-06 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Recent backscattering interferometry studies utilise a single channel microfluidic system, typically approximately semicircular in cross-section. Here, we present a complete ray tracing model for on-chip backscattering interferometry with a semicircular cross-section, including the dependence upon polarisation and angle of incidence. The full model is validated and utilised to calculate the expected fringe patterns and sensitivities observed under both normal and oblique angles of incidence. Comparison with experimental data from approximately semicircular channels using the parameters stated shows that they cannot be explained using a semicircular geometry. The disagreement does not impact on the validity of the experimental data, but highlights that the optical mechanisms behind the various modalities of backscattering interferometry would benefit from clarification. From the analysis presented here, we conclude that for reasons of ease of analysis, data quality, and sensitivity for a given radius, capillary-based backscattering interferometry affords numerous benefits over on-chip backscattering interferometry.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Collaborative Research: The Fortress and the Grassroots: Archaeological Investigations of Early Complex Societies on the Tsaghkahovit Plain, Armenia

  NSF · $57k · 2010–2014

Frequent coauthors

• Klaus J. Boller

  33 shared

• Petra Groß

  Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg

  25 shared

• B. Adhimoolam

  University of Twente

  18 shared

• M. Ebrahim-Zadeh

  Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats

  16 shared

• M.E. Klein

  16 shared

• Chris Lee

  14 shared

• Angela B. Seddon

  University of Nottingham

  12 shared

• Ole Bang

  Noblis

  12 shared

Education

• PhD, Anthropology

  University of California, Santa Barbara

  2006