This paper is focused on the presentation and discussion of an object oriented approach, applied to the Hierapolis(Turkey) site, to automatically detect the subtle features linked to buried archaeological remains. The data pro-cessing is applied twice: (i)first, globally at the whole image and, (ii) second, at the significant subsets identifiedby global analysis, in order to refine the previously obtained categorization. Object oriented approaches are usu-ally based on two main steps: i)first the segmentation, ii) then the classification. Herein, wefirst performed theunsupervised classification step and, then, the segmentation. This choice is given by the specificity of archaeolog-ical issue, in particular: (i) the subtle features/targets to be identified are partially or totally unknown and char-acterized by a very small spectral separability from the background, and therefore (ii) the discriminationbetween archaeological class and substrates likely suffers significant confusion. To cope with these issues, thefirst step is based on an unsupervised classification, which provides afirst‘rough’categorization of pixels; thesecondstep, basedon the segmentation,enables usto extract the geometric shape, and, inturn, toonlycategorizeas archaeological class those pixels belonging to geometrically (rectangular and linear) shaped clusters. Outputsfrom this classification identify rectangular and linear features of archaeological interest whose size suggestedthat they may be a farm and some sectors of an aqueduct, respectively. Results from satellite based analysiswere successfully evaluated by georadar and geomagnetic prospection along withfield survey. From georadarand geomagnetic prospection we were able i) to confirm the presence of buried remains and ii) to detail andcharacterize these archaeological features at the subsoil level as well as to define the local stratigraphy. Fromfield survey we dated the detected buried remains to a period spanning from Imperial Roman to early Byzantinehistorical times.
Towards an operative use of remote sensing for exploring the past using satellite data: The case study of Hierapolis (Turkey)
Persico R;
2016-01-01
Abstract
This paper is focused on the presentation and discussion of an object oriented approach, applied to the Hierapolis(Turkey) site, to automatically detect the subtle features linked to buried archaeological remains. The data pro-cessing is applied twice: (i)first, globally at the whole image and, (ii) second, at the significant subsets identifiedby global analysis, in order to refine the previously obtained categorization. Object oriented approaches are usu-ally based on two main steps: i)first the segmentation, ii) then the classification. Herein, wefirst performed theunsupervised classification step and, then, the segmentation. This choice is given by the specificity of archaeolog-ical issue, in particular: (i) the subtle features/targets to be identified are partially or totally unknown and char-acterized by a very small spectral separability from the background, and therefore (ii) the discriminationbetween archaeological class and substrates likely suffers significant confusion. To cope with these issues, thefirst step is based on an unsupervised classification, which provides afirst‘rough’categorization of pixels; thesecondstep, basedon the segmentation,enables usto extract the geometric shape, and, inturn, toonlycategorizeas archaeological class those pixels belonging to geometrically (rectangular and linear) shaped clusters. Outputsfrom this classification identify rectangular and linear features of archaeological interest whose size suggestedthat they may be a farm and some sectors of an aqueduct, respectively. Results from satellite based analysiswere successfully evaluated by georadar and geomagnetic prospection along withfield survey. From georadarand geomagnetic prospection we were able i) to confirm the presence of buried remains and ii) to detail andcharacterize these archaeological features at the subsoil level as well as to define the local stratigraphy. Fromfield survey we dated the detected buried remains to a period spanning from Imperial Roman to early Byzantinehistorical times.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
