On the characterization of temporal and spatial patterns of archaeological crop-marks

Multitemporal 2016-2018 Sentinel-2 Data Enhancement for Landscape Archaeology: The Case Study of the Foggia Province, Southern Italy

“…The high number of detected features characterized by possible archaeological interest were compared with ancillary data available from independent data sources as described in 1.1. Different tools were used for the validation (i) match with bibliography related to the investigated area [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][34][35][36][37]107,108]; (ii) comparison with Google Earth multi-temporal high-resolution images [109][110][111]; (iii) comparison with data of the National GeoPortal of the Italian Ministry of the Environment (http://www.pcn.minambiente.it/viewer/), and (iv) the data on the WebGis CartApulia (http://www.cartapulia.it/).…”

“…Moreover, in order to identify the best period of the features visibility, TSA was coupled with the Spectral Unmixing analysis, carried out (using the ENVI 5.3 software). Of course, the best period/season in which the phenomenon of soil and crop marks are evident can be different from one index to another and from one features to another even in the same image due effect of local factors [21,51]. Spectral Un-mixing is used to show single pixels values in the images as: (i) minimum value; (ii) maximum value; (iii) average; (iv) standard deviation.…”

“…These areas were already known for the presence of Neolithic settlements, Roman and Medieval remains, which are visible in aerial images and satellite data (Figure 4) [16][17][18][19]45,[84][85][86][87]. Figure 5 shows the spectral signature and the reflectance value of the pixels as a function of time, which was useful also to obtain the values that characterize the features of archaeological interest and the difference between the features and their neighboring pixels [21,51,64,76,88]. The analysis of the spectral signatures put in evidence a significant difference in reflectance value between archaeological features and their surroundings, from the band 6, 7, 8, 8A, and 11, covering the interval between Red edge and NIR bands, and SWIR band central wave length at 1.610 nm.…”

“…For the purposes of our investigations, the "Tavoliere delle Puglie", a plain in northern Apulia (Southern Italy), was selected as a test area due to its long human frequentation and, consequently, its high archaeological potential and variety of cultural heritage features, along with a huge amount of ancillary data and information also available in a GIS environment. In the past the area herein investigated has been widely studied also using very high resolution satellite data as QuickBird, World View [13], geophysical prospection [14,15], along with manned [16][17][18][19][20] and unmanned aerial archaeology prospection [21]. Archaeological recorders along with previous knowledge and information already available in GIS environment are herein adopted as ground truth [22][23][24][25][26][27] to assess the potentiality of Sentinel-2 data in known archaeological sites related to different periods and civilizations, from Neolithic era to Greek-Roman and Middle Ages [28][29][30][31][32][33].…”

Recent Trends and Long-standing Problems in Archaeological Remote Sensing

“…We have well published examples of hyperspectral imagery showing features invisible in panchromatic imagery (e.g. Bertok, Gati and Bela 2015;Doneus et al 2014;Masini et al 2018) and hyperspectral imagery is often collected at a lower resolution e.g. 1-2 m than aerial photography, with a typical resolution of 20-50 cm.…”