Zprávy památkové péče 2017, 77(1-2):137-144

Research historical landscape and protecting archaeological heritage through remote sensing methods

Martin Gojda

Filozofická fakulta Západočeské univerzity v Plzni

The current advanced state of development of remote archaeological sensing in many European countries is demonstrated by two important facts: first, the importance that this industry is attributed by archaeologists themselves, and secondly, the international cooperation which is continuously developing is addressing a significant part of the European scientific community and is helping to establish this non-destructive scope on a wider European territory. One of the countries in the postcommunist era (and even before) that has begun, and currently continues, to systematically develop remote sensing and aerial photography for the research of the past, is the Czech Republic.
Information obtained by any of the DAP methods primarily serves the needs of studying and protecting prehistoric and historic landscapes, and the remains of human activities it contains. We consider the main objectives of this field to be a blanket survey of the landscape from above, monitoring identification and mapping areas with previously unknown relics of past settlement activities; documentation of the cultural landscape, especially the varying categories of immovable monuments, but also relics of the original natural environment and manifestations of landscape taphonomy - in particular those related to the arrangement of previous human settlements; obtaining information from aerial and satellite imagery and lidar data acquired for a purpose other than archaeological prospection and the study of historic landscapes; recording, storing, and expert analysis of the data, its use in theoretically based research of the past and in the protection of cultural heritage - in this respect, the data from remote archaeological sensing are used mainly to address the issues of settlement and landscape archeology, i.e. the research of methods of landscape use and the study of forms of settlements, population density, and the structure of area settlement in the past.
Contactless methods of remote sensing have proven to be very efficient in the long run in their use in the care of the historic landscape and its immovable component. If, when evaluating their potential, we stay within the boundaries of the Czech Republic, we can say that thanks to a quarter of a century of systematic remote surveying of our landscape, our previous knowledge of prehistoric settlements has been significantly enriched primarily in residentially most exposed areas, the so-called old settlement territory (middle and lower Labe and Poohří, lower Povltaví and Pojizeří, Cidliny valley, respectively Nymbursko, Poděbradsko, Kolínsko, Mělnicko, Podřipsko, Litoměřicko, Lounsko, and Ústecko). The source base was quantitatively enriched by about thirteen hundred previously unknown archaeological sites - mainly residential prehistoric and early medieval components of settlement areas, but also of sites with evidence of human presence in the late middle ages, the modern age, and the early modern period. In terms of generic representation of immovable monuments, the existence of a number of structures that have been recorded only in a small number or not at all, whose presence affects our view of the representation of diverse categories of sites/buildings in former known settlements. This also involves theoretically based research directed towards understanding settlement forms, and the density and structure of previous settlements, since information from aerial photo data, also supplemented by extra data from surface and geophysical surveys, are the most appropriate. In the field of preserving archaeological heritage, the hitherto results of aerial surveys can be viewed primarily with regard to the fact that if we know the exact location of the newly recorded sites of archaeological interest, we have the opportunity to effectively protect them in the future.

Keywords: remote archaeological sensing, aerial photography, satellite imagery, lidar data, cultural landscape

Published: March 1, 2017  Show citation