Last Monday 19th July, La Vanguardia, one of the most read national newspapers in Catalonia and Spain, published an article on remote sensing and artificial intelligence featuring the research of our group. The article focuses on how drone and satellite imagery is radically transforming the detection of sites and other features of archaeological interest, such as scattered surface remains.
For example, it highlights how lidar helped us and our Galician (Miguel Carrero Pazos) and Portuguese (João Fonte) collaborators to detect more than 9000 mounds located in Galicia, which increases significantly the number of previously known mounds in the region, or how the combination of multispectral and SAR radar imagery is allowing us to map large-scale areas using cloud-computing platforms.
The article also mentions some of our ongoing projects in Greece and India. In Thessaly we are mapping mounds that go back to the Neolithic, whereas in South Asia we are partners together with the University of Cambridge and the University Pompeu Fabra in MAHSA, a new initiative funded by the Arcadia Fund that aims to use massive collections of historical maps, satellite imagery and machine and deep learning procedures to locate Bronze Age Indus settlements.
Furthermore, it also remarks how remote sensing is not only exceptional for archaeological surveys, but also for the preservation of Cultural Heritage. For example, a drone fleet could be used in Catalonia to monitor damage and looting in archaeological sites – with a detection range and response time that tremendously surpasses that of human patrolling.
Read the full article here (in Spanish): https://www.lavanguardia.com/cultura/20210719/7609133/arqueologia-indiana-jones-satelite-dron.html
