Title
Documenting Archaeological Sites on Mountains and Slopes with Drones
Date Issued
01 November 2019
Access level
metadata only access
Resource Type
journal article
Publisher(s)
Cambridge University Press
Abstract
The addition of drones to the archaeologist's toolbox has brought about exciting new possibilities, particularly for field research and the conservation and protection of our built heritage. As drones become more widely available and effective, the challenge of precision becomes more important. Better georeferencing and higher-resolution outputs are the current thresholds. In order to achieve the second objective with our current equipment, drones have to fly closer to the ground and, ideally, follow the elevation of the surface. This task can be extremely complicated along the steep surfaces and mountains typical to the Andean region where we work. In this article, we present a recording (flying and photographing) methodology that achieves a higher ground resolution by dividing up the sites into several altitudinal sections, which are flown independently yet processed photogrammetrically as a single set. We have named this methodology Flying Slopes in Multiple Stepped Polygons.
Start page
337
End page
352
Volume
7
Issue
4
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Ingeniería civil Ingeniería de sistemas y comunicaciones
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-85079386805
Source
Advances in Archaeological Practice
ISSN of the container
23263768
Sponsor(s)
This research was conducted with the permission of the Ministerio de Cultura and under the supervision of the Dirección Desconcentrada de Cultura de La Libertad. Fieldwork occurred during the Harvard University Archaeological Field School in San Jose de Moro. Funding for this program was generously provided by Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and the National Geographic Society as part of their ground-truthing efforts associated with GlobalXplorer. The Sustainable Preservation Initiative and the Patronato de las Huacas del Valle de Moche offered us their administrative support. We want to thank Larry Coben, Matthew Piscitelli, Sarah Parcak, Gary Urton, Jason Ur, Sabine Girod, the students of Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and Harvard, and particularly the late Santiago Uceda for their help. Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú PUCP
Sources of information: Directorio de Producción Científica Scopus