FLIGHTS INTO THE PAST

In Part I of this book, Flights into the Past, Chris Musson discusses the basic concepts, methods and uses of exploratory aerial survey. This technique has enlightened our view of the past, helped us to communicate with the general public and made a growing contribution to the conservation and protection of archaeological sites and landscapes in the face of threats from agriculture and industrial or urban development. The airborne archaeologist’s dialogue with the landscape below is in some senses enshrined in the prints and digital images so carefully captured and catalogued. But an archive of photographs is of little value if the resulting information has not been interpreted, mapped and recorded in ways that make it readily available to those who might want or need to use it. Hence Part II, Mapping the Past, by Rog Palmer. For a long time there had been problems in creating adequately accurate maps from oblique aerial photographs. But from the mid 1990s onwards purpose-made computer programs have made this a progressively more easy and effective process, using simple scanners and non-specialist desktop computers. In the new millennium we can genuinely view aerial information, whether from pre-existing photographs or from newly undertaken aerial exploration, as a major source of archaeological data and understanding, at its most effective when applied in symbiosis with field survey, excavation, documentary studies and other forms of remote sensing. In Part III, Aerial Survey at Work, Chris Musson and Stefano Campana (in 2004) used Italian examples to illustrate the uses and techniques of exploratory aerial survey and oblique air photography, treating the pictures as just a foretaste of things to come. The authors genuinely hoped, and still hope now (in 2012) that this book will soon be replaced by something broader in scope, both as regards the techniques described and the geopgraphical coverage, with examples of the ways in which aerial and related techniques have helped archaeologists across Europe to explore, map and explain the ancient sites and landscapes of their own countries. In time, no doubt, aerial archaeology and remote sensing will bring to the whole of Europe entirely new perspectives on the past, enriching but never replacing the longer-established methods of archaeological exploration and interpretation. In Part IV, Flights into the Future, Stefano Campana describes the approach being taken, in 2004, by the University of Siena to tackle the particular problems of landscape archaeology in Tuscany. Other contributors then look at various achievements and prospects in the application of then-fledgling remote sensing techniques. These are in a sense ‘snapshots in time’, recording what the authors were doing and thinking in the years up to 2004. They will hopefully provide a perspective on the advances that have been made since.