Current Development in Archaeological Remote Sensing: A Central European Experience and Evaluation

Martin Gojda

doi:10.24916/iansa.2019.2.5

Abstract

Current Development in Archaeological Remote Sensing: A Central European Experience and Evaluation

Highlights

As a consequence of the collapse of communist regimes in former Warsaw-Pact countries, the early 1990s became a period in which aerial archaeology in Central-Eastern Europe began to write its own history
The article describes how current trends are changing the traditional objective of aerial archaeology – prehistoric and ancient site detection and photographic recording – into a much more complex aim, namely: the integration of a variety of modern digitally-based sophisticated techniques of RS that are applicable to archaeology into the study of diachronic developments and synchronic structures of components of ancient and historical landscapes and settlements
The projects are based either on data publicly available on the internet or, occasionally, via contract scanning of selected areas under study

Summary

Introduction

As a consequence of the collapse of communist regimes in former Warsaw-Pact countries, the early 1990s became a period in which aerial archaeology in Central-Eastern Europe began to write its own history. This article offers the present author’s reflections on the these developments and changes within the field of archaeological remote sensing over the last quarter of a century, along with a personal evaluation of the current situation of the subject’s methodology with an eye to the future, based on his practical involvement in systematic, long-term, aerial archaeological prospection and past landscape and settlement research. In the history of archaeological remote sensing (ARS), the last couple of decades have brought several fundamental improvements to its methodology and datasets. The article describes how current trends are changing the traditional objective of aerial archaeology – prehistoric and ancient site detection and photographic recording – into a much more complex aim, namely: the integration of a variety of modern digitally-based sophisticated techniques of RS that are applicable to archaeology into the study of diachronic developments and synchronic structures of components of ancient and historical landscapes and settlements. The author presents an assessment of the role of ARS in the study of the past from a central European (mainly Czech) perspective

Theoretical considerations

The 1990s – 2000s turnaround: from aerial archaeology to archaeological remote sensing

Bohemia: extending ARS practice in research and heritage management

Findings

Conclusion