Potential of Corona Satellite Imagery for 3d Reconstruction of Archaeological Landscapes

Abstract

This paper presents a preliminary use of satellite imagery from the CORONA program in the reconstruction of thearchaeological landscape of two different sites: Ancient Termez (southern border of Uzbekistan) and Khatm Al Melaha(eastern coast of United Arab Emirates in Kalba area). This analysis constitutes the first step of the work carried out in thefield since 2018 at both sites for an analysis of the syntactic interoperability of multi-scale geospatial data for archaeologicalheritage. The aim of this work was to establish an approach for the use of CORONA satellite imagery for archaeologicalDEM reconstruction. The objectives of the reconstruction were conditioned for different reasons: in the case of Termezprior to the anthropic transformation of the site in the Soviet - Afghan War and in the case of Khatm Al Melaha prior to theurban, coastal and road transformation. The results have provided uneven data due to the characteristics of the existingimagery: mission, resolution, overlap, orography and different ground control point distribution. This methodology opens adoor to the reconstruction of archaeological landscapes that have suffered evident deterioration for different reasons bymeans of historical aerial imagery in the last 60 years, practically, in some cases, as a primary and unique source foranalysing this type of change from the past.

Archaeological Prospection With Corona and Wv-3 Satellite Imagery of the Archaeological Site of Zar Tepe (Uzbekistan)

“…Satellite imagery such as CORONA (Angás 2019(Angás , 2021, Hexagon and WorldView 3 have been used for this research. CORONA images are derived from KH (Key Hole) 1 -4 panoramic cameras.…”

Adaptive Dynamics of Settlement Models in the Urban Landscape of Termez (Uzbekistan) from c. 300 BCE to c. 1400 CE

“…The full analysis of all the data will require further post-processing and laboratory research in the future. However, the preliminary results are useful to identify the most appropriate sectors to carry out future fieldwork [11,48]. The comparative analysis of the data provides significant information about the area of study, which has suffered major changes in the last fifty years due to both natural and anthropic processes.…”

“…No ruins of those buildings have been preserved because they were destroyed during the excavation of irrigation canals around Termez in the second half of the 20th century [4] (pp. [40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53]. Although the walled enclosures define the urban area, the city was also surrounded by its suburbs.…”