Reconstructing the archaeological landscape of Southern Dobrogea: integrating imagery

Abstract

The recent integrated aerial photographic assessment of Southern Dobrogea (Romania) is part of the first author's British Academy funded research programme 'Contextualizing change on the Lower Danube: Roman impact on Daco-Getic landscapes'. This seeks to study the effect of the Roman conquest and occupation on the native Daco-Getic settlement pattern on the Lower Danube. The methodology involves integrating a range of remotely sensed imagery including: low altitude oblique aerial photographs, obtained through traditional aerial reconnaissance; medium altitude vertical photographs produced by German, British and American military reconnaissance during the Second World War, selected from The Aerial Reconnaissance Achive at Keele University; and high altitude de-classified military satellite imagery (Corona) from the 1960s, acquired from the USGS. The value of this approach lies not just in that it enables extensive detailed mapping of large archaeological landscapes in Romania for the first time, but also that it allows the recording of archaeological features permanently destroyed by more recent development across wide areas. This paper presents some results and addresses some of the problems raised by each method of data acquisition.