A Photogrammetric System for Archaeological Mapping Using Oblique Non‐metric Photography

Abstract

The Air Photographs Unit of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (RCHM) has taken a large collection of oblique aerial photographs, using a non‐metric camera, of archaeological evidence. Techniques are described which use this photography in conjunction with a Kern DSR1 analytical plotter to produce maps. Some results from using the techniques are given.

Photogrammetric image acquisition and image analysis of oblique imagery

“…O blique images have historically been used for visualisation and interpretation purposes, rather than for metric applications. Exceptions are the military sector and archaeology where oblique images have long been standard for reconnaissance purposes (Welzer, 1985; Smith, 1989). However, until recently oblique images were generally outside of the focus of photogrammetrists.…”

Georeferencing procedures for oblique aerial images

“…Furthermore, infrared oblique aerial images have been used for the purpose of detecting active faults (Babcock, 1971). In the 1970s, the use of computers has been introduced for map production out of oblique aerial imagery (Scollar, 1975;Palmer, 1977;Scollar et al, 1977) and applications involving archaeological mapping took place in this decade and in the subsequent years (Palmer, 1976;Smith, 1989;Doneus, 2001). Also, methods for mapping of snow cover patterns (Kirnbauer et al, 1991), image registration (Zheng and Chellappa, 1994) as well as detection and creation of 3D shape descriptions of buildings (Lin and Nevatia, 1995) using oblique aerial images were proposed.…”