Abstract
Preliminary analysis of an archaeological site requires the acquisition of information by several diverse diagnostic techniques. Remote sensing plays an important role especially in spatially extended and not easily accessible sites for the purposes of preventive and rescue archaeology, landscape archaeology, and intervention planning. In this paper, we present a case study of a detailed topographic survey based on a light detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensor carried by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV; also known as drone). The high-resolution digital terrain model, obtained from the cloud of points automatically labeled as ground, was searched exhaustively by an expert operator looking for entrances to prehistoric hypogea. The study documents the usefulness of such a technique to reveal anthropogenic structures hidden by vegetation and perform fast topographic documentation of the ground surface.
Highlights
Fallavollita, P.; Melis, M.G.; Milanese, The initial job of archaeological intervention on a not previously studied or only partially known site requires a preliminary analysis based on the interdisciplinary use of different diagnostic techniques [1] to identify detectable indicators or anomalies connected to the presence of structures or archaeological remains preserved underground [2] prior to excavation or other direct intervention on-site
On extended sites, remote sensing plays an important role in such preliminary surveys, and it can be conducted at several different scales, in particular from satellites, manned aircraft, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), known as drones
We present the results of a case study for use of light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data in the preliminary survey of an archeological site involving artificial cavities hidden by vegetation
Summary
Fallavollita, P.; Melis, M.G.; Milanese, The initial job of archaeological intervention on a not previously studied or only partially known site requires a preliminary analysis based on the interdisciplinary use of different diagnostic techniques [1] to identify detectable indicators or anomalies connected to the presence of structures or archaeological remains preserved underground [2] prior to excavation or other direct intervention on-site. Non-invasive diagnostic techniques generally return important information on the quality of archaeological sites, which are often not obtainable with stratigraphic archaeological excavation and can instead be better addressed by integrated use of scientific technologies, significantly saving financial and human resources. Such activities are important in preventive and rescue archaeology [3,4] (where they are identified as “predictive archaeology” [5]) and in landscape archaeology [6,7]. Radar is used both in properly remote sensing (satellite– and airplane-based synthetic aperture radar (SAR)) and in proximal sensing (ground penetrating radar (GPR)), recently mounted on low-flying UAVs [9,10,11,12]
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