Archaeology, remote sensing

Remote Sensing – or Te ́le ́de ́tection (French), Fernerkundung (German), Percepcion Remota (Spanish), 遙感 (Chinese) – can be defined as the science of identifying, observing, interpreting, and measuring objects or surfaces without coming into direct contact with them. In the archaeological process, the scientific community has taken at least two different approaches to the definition of remote sensing. Some archaeologists define it as the technique of obtaining information about objects through the analysis of data collected by sensors (cameras, scan- ners, imaging radar systems, etc.) that are not in physical contact with the objects under investigation, mostly using spaceborne and airborne instruments. From this point of view, remote sensing differs from ground-based sensing, in which the instruments physically touch the ground sur- face. A common example of a ground-based instrument is ground-penetrating radar (Doneus et al., 2011). Other archaeologists prefer to include within remote sensing any nondestructive approach to viewing the buried and nominally invisible evidence of past activity. These approaches include spaceborne and airborne sen- sors (traditional or digital air photographic sensors, technology-based multispectral or hyperspectral scanners, etc.) but also ground-based geophysical instruments (see other entries on geophysics, magnetometry, ground- penetrating radar, and electrical resistivity). Undersea remote sensing can also fall into this category, as can noninvasive techniques such as surface collection or field-walking survey, in the eyes of some archaeologists. Within this interpretation, any method that enables obser- vation of the buried evidence without impacting the surviving stratigraphy is included within remote sensing (Powlesland, 2010).