Geoarchaeology:Remote Sensing

SASSA Home Page &#8658; Geoarchaeology Home Page &#8658; Scope of Geoarchaeology &#8658; Remote Sensing and Geoarchaeology

Remote Sensing and Geoarchaeology
Remote sensing can reveal landscape and site detail that is invisible to the human eye; either because of the extensive vertical overview it offers, or because the sensers used are detecting wavelengths that the human eye cannot register. In both cases, soil type is an important factor in the visibility of many features.

Crop marks are an artefact of soil depth and moisture, as plants grow more strongly in deep moist soils such as over a ditch compared to the shallow droughty substrates that might be expected over buried walls. However, because a contrast is required before these patterns show up, some soil types, such as free draining brown earths over gravels can be expected to reveal good crop marks, whilst in the same year poorly drained clay rich alluvial soils may reveal very little about the buried archaeological structures they conceal.

Soil temperature, moisture, colour, organic matter content and composition can all be subtly altered as a legacy of past human activity, and changes in all of these properties can be detected by a host of spectral sensers. Multi-spectral approaches in particular can be very powerful in highlighting and interpreting buried structures and landscape features not visible either on the ground, or in standard air photos (e.g. Winterbottom and Dawson, 2005).

An example of a case study in which soils have played an important part in the interpretation of remotely sensed data is:
 * Airborne multi-spectral remote sensing at Coll and Tiree in Scotland

External websites

 * NASA's website on archaeology and remote sensing
 * British Archaeological Jobs Resource, Aerial photography and manual image rectification