Archaeological Aerial Thermography in Theory and Practice

Summary

Archaeologists have recognized since the 1970s that thermal images captured at an optimal time in the diurnal cycle have the potential to reveal surface artifacts, subtle topography, and even subsurface architectural remains. However, it is only with the recent development of reliable and stable unmanned aerial vehicles, small, uncooled, high-resolution thermal cameras, and powerful photogrammetric image processing software that archaeological aerial thermography has become practical. This paper discusses our recent efforts to deploy this emerging technology on a range of archaeological sites, with examples including an ancestral Puebloan community in New Mexico, a Mississippian mound center in Arkansas, a Late Bronze Age city in Cyprus, and an Iron Age metal production center in Dubai. Results provide a methodological blueprint for drone-based collection and processing of thermal imagery, and illustrate some of the factors that affect the visibility of archaeological features under different environmental conditions. We also discuss a number of experimental approaches to processing thermal data that help highlight archaeological features even further, pointing to some of the many still unexplored possibilities for drone-based aerial thermography to aid in archaeological research.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Archaeological Applications of Unmanned Aerial Systems (Drones)

Keywords