Open-source Remote Sensing data for the characterization of the Iron Age in Euskadi

29th Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeologists (EAA)

Belfast. Irlanda
Conference. 2023

Basque Country (Iberian Peninsula). The project departs from common Landscape Archaeology premises steaming from other scholarship in the Iberian Peninsula. However environmental issues as thick pine forests, extremely rouged terrain and access to sites. These three environmental factors pose serious problem for both research and heritage preservation. A non-invasive approach based on LiDAR sensing would provide a basis for testing research hypothesis and to assess the preservation of archaeological zones.

We will present the methodological approach consisting of a spatial sampling of the Basque coast to assess different archaeological scenarios. This process is organized among the team members who inspect several LiDAR products from geo.Euskadi.eus and create a comprehensive map of features and traces that later on are related to legacy data, such as archaeological gazetteers, evidence in the Archaeology Museum at Bilbo. Secondly, the project uses a combination of the abovementioned publicly available LiDAR datasets with private drone-mounted Lidar flights over key sites (Malmasin or Sollube) on sites where the data quality is not good enough to provide answers posed by the project, as the existence of ramparts, fortifications, or other earthworks. The later process involved the participation of local communities in the organization of flight plans, cleaning, and other works in the sites before ground-truthing with on-site geophysics, and eventually the assessment of heritage conservation and elaboration of guidelines.

Euskadi. Iron Age. Remote-sensing.