Airborne LiDAR data for the study of Roman military presence in NW Iberia

22nd Annual Meeting of the Europaen Asociation of Archaeologists

Vilnius. Lituania
Congreso. 2016

The Roman military settlements are usually characterized by the perishable nature of the structures and the material culture associated to them. Since these sites are almost invisible in the landscape, the use of remote sensing techniques for their study became essential. Although the use of certain remote sensing tools –i.e. aerial photography– on this issue in the Iberian Peninsula is not new, the development of Roman military archaeology in recent decades greatly demanded a significant renovation of the methodological approaches. In this way, we put into practice a low-cost methodology combining historical and modern aerial photography, satellite imagery, airborne LiDAR, GIS and conventional archaeological field survey techniques. These tools actually provide a new and qualitatively differential approach, allowing us to study the spatial, locational and morphological characteristics of these sites, and thus leading to a more contextualising approach.

In this paper, we will focus on the differential contribution of airborne LiDAR data within this particular methodological approach. By analysing the response of this tool to different landscapes, terrain types and vegetation canopies, we can outline the potential and limitations of it. On that basis, we can then develop a predictive model for its use when studying Roman military sites such as temporary/marching camps. This technique allows us to map archaeological landscapes as a whole, so we need to develop different strategies to increase the visibility of certain types of features in the landscape. Landscape is not just a messy amount of archaeological features, but a palimpsest of multiple temporalities we need to read and understand.