Remote Sensing Methods for Investigating Modern-Day Land-Use Intensity in Archaeological Landscapes: A Case Study from the Sinis Archaeological Project, Sardinia

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Many archaeological surveys are conducted in landscapes that are today being actively used for agricultural production. Farming practices, such as plowing, are in fact often essential for exposing and bringing to the surface formerly buried archaeological materials—the study of which allows archaeologists to develop regional-scale assessments of where human activities took place in the past. Despite careful survey and sampling protocols, such assessments nevertheless remain biased by field conditions at the time of survey. Numerous studies have investigated the effects of visibility, weather, and obtrusiveness on artifact recovery rates, yet few have considered the long-term effects of land-use intensity itself: how frequently fields are planted and cultivated over a multi-year period. Obtaining such information at regional scales has previously been extremely challenging but is now possible with the widescale availability of high temporal and spatial resolution satellite imagery. In this paper, we investigate trends in land-use intensity within the Sinis Peninsula of west-central Sardinia during the period 2018–2022. Using Sentintel-2 data and Google Earth Engine, we evaluate and quantify the intensity of land use across this landscape and consider what effects modern-day land-use practices may have on the frequency and composition of recovered archaeological materials.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36145.0