Beyond the surface

Keywords: endangered cultural heritage, high-resolution laser, large-scale geophysical archaeological prospection

Abstract:
Documenting endangered cultural heritage through integration of high-resolution laser scanning and large-scale geophysical archaeological prospection

Standing cultural heritage in form of architectural remains is endangered due to weathering, erosion, accidents, gradual decay and vandalism, while buried cultural heritage is mostly threatened by intensive agricultural land use, in particular deep ploughing, greenfield development and not insignificantly the cutting of drainage trenches, amongst others. Modern technology in form of remote sensing methods, primarily laser scanning, and non-invasive geophysical archaeological prospection methods, such as magnetometry and ground-penetrating radar measurements, can under suitable conditions permit the time- and cost-efficient documentation of the structures of archaeological interest. Being beneficial to rescue and exploration archaeology as well as to archaeological research alike, the recorded digital data preserves the cultural heritage as virtual copy and permits the investigation of buried archaeology without disturbing the site. Commonly, 3D surface documentation methods and subsurface prospection are applied and presented separately. The full integration of the high-resolution prospection data with 3D digital terrain models harbours a great, so far widely untapped potential for enhanced data analysis, visualisation and interpretation. Using examples from archaeological prospection and 3D documentation case studies conducted by the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology with its partner organizations at World Cultural Heritage sites and outstanding archaeological monuments we demonstrate the integration of 3D surface models acquired with laser scanning and subsurface archaeological prospection results.

2015