The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs, also known as drones or RPA) in archaeology has expanded significantly over the last twenty years. Improvements in terms of the reliability, size, and manageability of these aircraft have been largely complemented by the high resolution and spectral bands provided by the sensors of the different cameras that can be incorporated into their structure. If we add to this the functionalities and improvements that photogrammetry programs have been experiencing in recent years, we can conclude that there has been a qualitative leap in the possibilities, not only of geometric documentation and in the presentation of the archaeological data, but in the incorporation of non-intrusive high-resolution analytics. The work that we present here gives a sample of the possibilities of both geometric documentation, creation of 3D models, their subsequent printing with different materials, and techniques to finally show a series of analytics from images with NGB (Nir + Green + Blue), Red Edge, and Thermographic cameras applied to various archaeological sites in which our team has been working since 2013, such as Clunia (Peñalba de Castro, Burgos), Puig Rom (Roses), Vilanera (L’Escala, Girona), and Cosa (Ansedonia, Italy). All of them correspond to different chronological periods as well as to varied geographical and morphological environments, which will lead us to propose the search for adequate solutions for each of the environments. In the discussions, we will propose the lines of research to be followed in a project of these characteristics, as well as some results that can already be viewed.
The construction of the Aswan Dam put an end to a form of relationship between people and the environment that had its origin in the pre-Pharaonic period. The annual Nile flood had been tamed and managed for centuries by the societies of the Nile delta. However, by the nineteenth century, attempts to modernize Egypt according to Western standards led to a gradual change in how the river was managed and exploited, focusing on permanent irrigation of the land. These changes took the form of successive hydraulic engineering projects that transformed the entire landscape. Our project aims to analyze how this long process took place, from the Greco-Roman period to the present day, by focussing on the middle valley of the Nile, in the area corresponding to the Oxyrhynchus nome (province), in order to reconstruct the methods of flood management and how they have transformed the landscape.For this purpose, we have combined an analysis of archaeological and written documentation, consisting primarily of papyrological data and secondary sources. We have also combined a reading of the historical cartography with the identification of traces of dykes and canals from satellite images (CORONA, ASTER, Quickbird, Worldview 2), and related enhancing functions of satellite imagery. These data were organized and registered on a GIS geodatabase that enabled all the information to be analyzed and confirmed. Our initial findings define an ancient landscape, in which old channels structured the landscape around the nome. These channels, and their levees associated with dykes, favoured both the containment of water and terrestrial transport, in an area that would be completely inundated in the flood season. This combination of channels with some element of retention was important for territorial and administrative organization within the nome, the administrative territorial division of Egypt, and its subdivision the toparchy.
This article presents the first results obtained from the use of high-resolution images from the SAR-X sensor of the PAZ satellite platform. These are in result of the application of various radar image-treatment techniques, with which we wanted to carry out a non-invasive exploration of areas of the archaeological site of Clunia (Burgos, Spain). These areas were analyzed and contrasted with other sources from high-resolution multispectral images (TripleSat), or from digital surface models obtained from Laser Imaging Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data from the National Plan for Aerial Orthophotography (PNOA), and treated with image enhancement functions (Relief Visualization Tools (RVT)). Moreover, they were compared with multispectral images created from the Infrared Red Blue (IRRB) data contained in the same LiDAR points.
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