David C. Cowley, ed. Remote Sensing for Archaeological Heritage Management (Proceedings of the 11th EAC Heritage Management Symposium, Reykjavík, Iceland, 25–27 March 2010), Occasional Publication of the Aerial Archaeology Research Group No. 3. (Brussels: Europae Archaeologia Consilium (EAC)), 2011, 312 pp., hbk, ISBN 978-963-9911-20-8)

Abstract

also of interest as it brings inspiring ideas through a 'view from the outside' (from a non-ARS specialist) on how aerial photographs can enrich the knowledge of amateur historians, or even a wider public, in their study of the local past, including thoughts on how to organize 'courses' on the management and use of this sort of imagery for people who find creative work with this resource interesting. The final part, entitled 'Military archaeology', deals with the ever-increasing interest of ARS scholars in the investigation of military aerial and satellite imagery for the study, management, and protection of both world wars and Cold War heritage, such as components and defensive systems, which is a field currently the focus of predominantly British specialists (cf. Winton & Horne, Chapter 2, p. 7), but also for the identification of wartime grave sites (Chapter 24 by M. J. Abicht) and for other purposes. To conclude, my general impression is that Landscapes through the Lens is a valuable work for more than one reason. The volume brings a structured assortment of studies based on remotely-sensed image data. As such, readers get a very good idea about the archival/historical aerial imagery, and, better, about themes which are now predominantly studied in this sub-field of ARS. Anglo-American editors rightly realized that inviting authors from almost the whole world enables readers to see the wide variety of approaches to the slowly developing work with historical photographs spread in archives all over the world, whose quantity is more or less known and whose quality is certainly invaluable. This truly international (global, in fact) volume has a good chance to fulfil expectationsto positively influence both a professional audience and amateur individuals, and support them in their efforts to investigate archives and to map their contents, and to do work with archival and historical aerial images. Integrating this sort of data with other kinds of archaeological and environmental sources is vital from the perspective of both theoretically based ancient landscape research and archaeological heritage management.

3D terrestrial laser scanning of El Fuerte de Samaipata

“…Another example of a place where TLS was used is Çatalhöyük, a nine-thousand-year-old Neolithic city [11] where the state of its preservation was monitored during several surveying epochs. 3D scanning and modeling has also been used for the documentation, preservation, and resto-ration of other cultural heritage objects and historical sites [12]- [14]. TLS is even mentioned by UNESCO in their guidelines for World Heritage Sites management [15].…”