Analysis of RGB Images to Enhance Archaeological Cropmark Detection: the Case Study of Nuceriola, Italy

Abstract

This work presents an experiment conducted on the settlement of Nuceriola, an archaeological site identified along the ancient via Appia, the road that starting from Rome passed through the city of Beneventum (Italy) in the direction of Brindisi. Different tools have been applied to enhance the detection of archaeological cropmarks. Since 2011, the Ancient Appia Landscapes Project has been working on the detection of the dynamics and the network of ancient settlement located along the Appia road in the east of Benevento, along with the cyclical elements and the human activities that influenced the evolution of landscapes. Starting from the photogrammetric results obtained from the processing of images from UAV, this document compares different types of mapping applying vegetative indices (VI) on raster data in order to point out archaeological evidence on land cultivated with wheat. For aerial image shots, a commercial quadcopter with RGB camera was used to identify the buried remains in archaeological settlements by means of visual recognition. The aim was to verify which types of mapping with VI can produce the best results for the display of archaeological finds, especially in terms of cropmarks. The case study shows that the use of only RGB cameras, without the addition of multispectral or thermal cameras, already allows the digital recording of buried archaeological remains through the application of appropriate filtering procedures of the colorimetric data and the vegetative indices.