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Airborne spectral imagery for archaeological prospection in grassland environments—an evaluation of performance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Rebecca Bennett ,
Kate Welham ,
Ross A. Hill  and
Andrew Ford
Rebecca Bennett
Affiliation:
1Art, Art History and Visual Studies, 112 East Duke Building, 1304 Campus Drive, Duke University, North Carolina 27708, USA (Email: [email protected])
Kate Welham
Affiliation:
2School of Applied Sciences, Bournemouth University, Talbot Campus, Poole, BH12 5BB, UK (Email: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected])
Ross A. Hill
Affiliation:
2School of Applied Sciences, Bournemouth University, Talbot Campus, Poole, BH12 5BB, UK (Email: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected])
Andrew Ford
Affiliation:
2School of Applied Sciences, Bournemouth University, Talbot Campus, Poole, BH12 5BB, UK (Email: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected])
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Abstract

The new generation of aerial photographers is using different wavelengths to sense archaeological features. This is effective but can be expensive. Here the authors use data already collected for environmental management purposes, and evaluate it for archaeological prospection on pasture. They explore the visibility of features in different seasons and their sensitivity to different wavelengths, using principal components analysis to seek out the best combinations. It turns out that this grassland gave up its secrets most readily in January, when nothing much was growing, and overall the method increased the number of known sites by a good margin. This study is of the greatest importance for developing the effective survey of the world's landscape, a quarter of which is under grass.

Keywords

aerial photographyremote sensingmulti-spectralTCCFCCNVDIPCA
Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 87 , Issue 335 , March 2013 , pp. 220 - 236
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2013

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