Abstract
The impressive hydraulic system built by the Assyrian King Sennacherib is composed by different archaeological areas, displaced along the Land of Nineveh, in Iraqi Kurdistan. The extensive project we are working on has the aim of mapping and geo-referencing any kind of documentation in order to design an archaeological-environmental park able to preserve and enhance the archaeological complex. Unfortunately, the area is failing a topographic documentation and the available cartography is not sufficient for planning and documentation purposes. The research work presented in these pages moves towards this direction, by exploiting Pleiadés Very High Resolution (VHR) images (in both nadir and stereo configuration) for an accurate mapping of the site. In more depth, Pleiadés nadir VHR images have been used to perform a pansharpening procedure used to enhance the visual interpretation of the study area, whilst stereo-pair have been processed to produce the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of the study area. Statistical evaluations show the high accuracy of the processing and the reliability of the outputs as well. The integration of different products, at different Levels of Detail within a unique GIS environment, besides protecting, preserving and enhancing the water system of Sennacherib’s, paves the way to allow the Kurdistan Regional Government to present a proposal for the admission of the archaeological complex in the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List (WHTL).
Highlights
With the advent of fast and agile pipelines of data collection, it has become easier and easier to gather detailed information of archaeological areas
In line with previous research conducted to evaluate the differences between the Digital Elevation Model (DEM) production using panchromatic and pansharpened images [10], to produce the cartography of the site, we used the first one, which final DEM have been submitted to a post processing and editing phase
Even if the same procedure had been used for the stereo-pair, the more reliable DEM was the one produced with the panchromatic dataset
Summary
With the advent of fast and agile pipelines of data collection, it has become easier and easier to gather detailed information of archaeological areas. Some zones can be impervious to be reached due to the morphology, the wideness or, sometimes, because the war impedes systematic campaigns on site. It is well known, that a common problem for archaeologists studying the evolutions of ancient settlement is overcoming the hazardous conditions of those risky areas. Investigations are realized by extensive ground surveys in which insiders perform on site surveys and excavations [1] but, if not possible, an excellent opportunity is nowadays offered by high resolution satellite images, which allow one to infer useful information of an area, whereas unreachable; in its broadest meaning archaeology might strongly benefit from the use of remote sensing (RS) techniques, since embrace methods to uncover (and map) evidence of the past [2].
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