The paper evidences the importance of old aerial and satellite photos of
ancient topography studies, with examples concerning archaeological and
geo-archaeological research conducted in Italy and Turkey, during a
cooperation between the Ancient Topography, Archaeology and Remote Sensing
Laboratory (AnTAReS Lab) of the Institute for Archaeological and Monumental
Heritage of the Italian National Research Council (IBAM-CNR) and the Ancient
Topography and Photogrammetry Laboratory (LabTAF) of Salento University.
The historical aerial photos, i.e. those before the big transformations of
the 1950's and 1960's, and the space photos taken in the 1960's and 1970's,
particularly useful for the Near East, represent a fundamental tool for the
study of the territory. In many cases, in fact, they document landscapes
that have been modified by urbanization, building of large infrastructures,
transformations in the land use and diffusion of mechanized agricultural
methods. Only through the detailed analysis of these aerial and space photos
it is possible to recover a fundamental documentation concerning the
existence, the location and the layout of archaeological evidence and
paleo-environmental elements otherwise lost; so, their use during research
is very important for the reconstruction of the ancient topography of urban
and territorial contexts. |