Abstract
Aerial archaeology is the discipline that encompasses the study of all types of archaeological remains using data collected from an airborne platform: digital or film-based aerial photographs, airborne laser scanning, aerial imaging spectroscopy (AIS) etc. So far, AIS has occupied only a very small niche in the field of archaeological airborne remote sensing. Besides reasons of cost, the common archaeologically-insufficient ground-sampling distance of 1-3 m can be considered the main limiting factor. Moreover, the technical processing of these highly redundant data does typically not surpass the calculation of band ratios and a principal component analysis. As a result, the few practical applications of archaeological AIS have not been very convincing so far. The aim of this contribution is to present the analysis of several archaeologically-relevant hyperspectral datasets acquired in different seasons above the Roman town of Carnuntum (Austria) and characterised by a ground-sampling distance of 40 cm or smaller. It will be shown how a specifically developed MATLAB toolbox was used to extract important archaeological information from these hyperspectral pixels. To this end, a variety of approaches that are not commonly applied in archaeological remote sensing research (such as the red edge inflection point and distribution fitting) are tested and validated. Finally, a comparison with simultaneously acquired oblique and vertical photographs will indicate the specific advantages of high-resolution AIS data.
Geert Julien Joanna Verhoeven
Vice Director, Senior Researcher
