Satellite remote sensing for the reconstruction and mapping of archaeological resources in alluvial environments

Abstract

The deposition of deep alluvial sediments within river floodplains during the Holocene, often renders conventional forms of archaeological prospection, such as geophysical survey or aerial photography, ineffective. Consequently, within alluvial environments, archaeologists have turned to the construction of deposit models to evaluate the archaeological potential of various landforms. Despite the potential of satellite remote sensing data to identify alluvial landforms and archaeological deposits, the contribution of these datasets within deposit modelling has only received limited attention. This research explores the capability of contemporary space-borne techniques (Synthetic Aperture Radar [SAR] and multispectral data), to map floodplains and subsequently make predictions of their archaeological potential. The results show that through the delineation of flood inundation, SAR can be used to define alluvial landforms. Moreover, they show that the surface spectral response recorded by multispectral imagery can also be used to achieve this. However, a more meaningful interpretation has been achieved through the combination of multiple data sources, each measuring different ground surface properties, which can be used as a proxy indicator of subsurface sediment architectures. Given the increasingly widespread availability of data from spaceborne systems, as well as reductions in cost, these datasets are becoming increasingly accessible, and will likely be progressively relied upon by geoarchaeologists.