Archeology Remote Sensing

The archeology remote sensing have helped to locate and provide information about archeology sites. History is all about human reaction with the environment. The human impacts can be traced out through archeology remote sensing which is not seen through naked eyes.

Instruments used for archeology remote sensing :

•  Color Infrared Film (CIR) : Longer wavelengths beyond the red end of the light spectrum can be detected by CIR. CIR identifies slight difference in vegetation. The archaeological features buried inside the earth will affect the vegetation above. Those types of features will be seen in color infrared photography.

•  Thermal Infrared Multispectral Scanner (TIMS): This archeology remote sensing instrument contains a six channel scanner that gives an accurate measurement of thermal radiation from the ground. The pixels can be used for archaeological research.

•  Airborne Oceanographic Lidar (ADI) : This archeology remote sensing instrument is used for creating earth surface profiles. Lidar data can be processed to know the elevation, slope, morphology of coastal waters, subsurface topography. Thus it can archaeological sites buried under water.

•  Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR): The lineament of different features as well as the features having geometric shapes on the ground are recorded by this archeology remote sensing equipment. Prehistoric footpaths were found in Costa Rica using the radar.

•  Microwave Radar: Radar pulses are beamed to the ground which measures any kind of echo in the ground. Thus this archeology remote sensing tool is useful for tracing out buried artifacts. The microwaves are reflected by artificial objects thereby giving a underground picture without physically coming in contact with it.

•  Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR): It is a very useful device used in archeology remote sensing to get a picture of a archaeological site buried underneath the soil.

Application of archeology remote sensing :

•  Finding a historic site: Different tools of archeology remote sensing can be used to trace the buried sites. The deserts of Sudan was penetrated by the Synthetic Aperture Radar in 1982, and the watercourses buried beneath the sand was discovered.

•  Taking photographs: Photographs of archaeological sites can be taken through archeology remote sensing equipments. These photographs can be used in brochures to promote tourism in that particular area. For example photographs of Harappa and Mohenjodaro appear in tourism brochures of Pakistan. But it must be remembered that these imageries also have a historic connotation.

•  Line of Sight view: Imageries of the same site are captured from different directions to find out the total extent of the archaeological site and the accuracy of the imageries. A vast area can be covered through line of sight techniques.

•  Predictive model building: Rough data about buried archaeological site underneath the water or beneath the soil help to build models of the underlying site or artifacts. This type of model building actually depends on the characteristic of the reflectance wave.

The sensors in the satellites capture the spectrum of sunlight reflected by the surface of the earth . These spectrum give us information about the surface composition or past activities of mankind like pattern or distribution of houses, drainage pattern, road networks and other characteristics.

Thus archeology remote sensing truly provides an insight to the history.