Archaeological Exploration in Srirangapatna and Its Environ Through Remote Sensing Analysis

Abstract

This study involves exploration of archaeological structures in Srirangapatana and virtual reconstruction of Srirangapatana fort using geo-spatial techniques. Antiquity of this river island town goes back to ninth century AD which continued till British rule and hence has abundance of archaeological structures on it. Some of these structures are known and well-maintained while others are unprotected, unexcavated, hidden under thick vegetation or forgotten. To identify archaeological features such as buried/dilapidated/vegetation infested structures/features on ground, we used high resolution multispectral remote sensing data (0.5 and 5.6 m), Cartosat 1 stereo pairs (2.5 m), anaglyphs, historical documents, and analysed them on GIS platform. This study enabled us to: trace the concentric moats and fort-wall by using false colour composite image together with anaglyphs generated from Cartosat 1 stereo pair; explore hitherto unexplored and unexcavated archaeological features; identify unknown and abandoned temples/structures smothered with wild vegetation; locate exact location of currently non-existent site mentioned in historical records; identify the location of buried canal. This study also demonstrates how methodic use of various interpretation keys, image processing and analysis (such as NDVI, DEM, anaglyphs) can help in extracting archaeological features and direct archaeologists for further exploration.