Remote Sensing in Archaeological Resource Management

Canberra.
This is a very fast-moving DHA 2012 session – the next speaker is Adela Sobotkova, who’ll present the Bulgarian experience in archaeological remote sensing in Bulgaria. Remote sensing extracts information from photographic images captured from space; such information has been used for site mapping and for the detection of new archaeological sites.

This has been deployed in Bulgaria for a number of regional archaeological projects, for example for mapping a substantial number of Thracian burial mounts in the Kazanlak valley. This was also an exercise in measuring the reliability of remote sensing approaches – and as it turned out, it was even possible to determine in many cases whether mounds had been robbed (and how long ago). Such evidence about the extent of looting is also valuable in combatting illegal antiquities trafficking: it provides an indication of the likelihood that recovered antiquities were indeed obtained illegally.

A large dataset of visual imagery, and of legacy data over time, is highly valuable in this context – and there are many more opportunities here especially for archaeological resource management.