Archaeology from the Air: Lecture 1, Nottingham Autumn 2014

Archaeology from the Air

Class 1: Aerial archaeology pioneers from Wessex to the Middle East

Tutor: Keith Challis

archaeology-from-the-air.blogspot.co.uk

Class Summary

• Admin and Housekeeping• Personal Introduction• Course Outline• What is aerial archaeology?

• Coffee Break

• Feedback – themes and choices• From Wessex to the Middle East, early pioneers


Admin and Housekeeping

Practicalities

• Enrolment paperwork

• Register

• Absence ([email protected]) or Phone/Txt 07921457007

• What to bring

• Handouts (paperless course?)

• Internet access?


Personal Introduction

About Me• National Trust

• Research Associate, Department of Archaeology, University of York

• Research Fellow in Remote Sensing, University of Birmingham

• Research Officer, York Archaeological Trust

• Research Associate, University of Nottingham

• 13 years project management and commercial archaeological consultancy at Trent & Peak Archaeology


My Interests

• Remote Sensing– Lidar– Airborne MS/HS imagery– Satellite applications in

cultural heritage

• Heritage– Alluvial geoarchaeology– Medieval landscapes

• GI Science– Predictive modelling– Landscape analyis– Visualisation of landscape


Course Outline

Course Outline

1. Aerial archaeology pioneers from Wessex to the Middle East

2. Aerial archaeology grows up: from WW2 to the National Mapping Programme

3. Using aerial photographs 1: types of photograph and evidence

4. Using aerial photographs 2: from photograph to map

5. Space based satellite systems and archaeology


Course Outline

6. Seeing beyond the visible. What is hyperspectral remote sensing?

7. Mapping the shape of the land. Lidar, radar and archaeology

8. Looking at a landscape in detail using aerial imagery

9. The future of aerial archaeology


Learning Outcomes

• Appreciate the historical development of aerial archaeology in Britain and more widely.

• Understand the principle types of archaeological evidence seen on aerial photographs and how this evidence is used by archaeologists.

• Be able to look at, critically assess and sketch plot archaeological evidence on aerial imagery.

• Be familiar with some non-photographic techniques for examining landscape from the air.


Learning Experience• Informal Lecture

• Discussion

• Applied skills


Barber, M. (2011). A History of Aerial Photography and Archaeology: Mata Hari's Glass Eye and Other Stories. English Heritage. [KEY TEXT] Crawford, O. G. S., & Keiller, A. (1928). Wessex from the Air. Clarendon Press. Greene, K., & Moore, T. (2010). Archaeology: an introduction. Routledge. Hauser, K. (2008). Bloody Old Britain: OGS Crawford and the archaeology of modern life. Granta UK. Riley, D. N. (1987). Air photography and archaeology. Duckworth. Riley, D. N., Samuels, J., & May, J. (1980). Early Landscape from the Air: studies of crop marks in South Yorkshire and North Nottinghamshire. Department of Prehistory and Archaeology, University of Sheffield. Whimster, R. (1989). The emerging past. RCHME (English Heritage), London.


Reading and Books

Reading and Books

Course bookshop (Amazon)

http://astore.amazon.co.uk/hoskins-21


Course Web Site

• Lecture Slides

• Downloadable handouts

• Bookshop

• Resources

• Supplementary Material

• Answers


http://archaeology-from-the-air.blogspot.co.uk

Options

• Existing group knowledge and skills…?

• Interests and preferences

• Themes and skills…?


Section 1: What is Aerial Archaeology?

What is Aerial Archaeology?

Techniques: Conventional Photographic


Alexander Keiller, Wessex From the Air (1928)


Techniques: Active Survey (Lidar/radar)



Techniques: MS and Space Based Imaging


Worldview 2


Techniques: The future, UAVs and more



What can you see from the air?





Roman Fort, Newton Kyme, Yorks

Cropmarks




Soilmarks Shadow Sites


Making Sense of Landscape


Caistor Roman Fort, Norfolk

An English Heritage, National Mapping Programme cropmark plot, the result of analysis of numerous photographs taken over many years.


A distinct discipline?


COFFEE BREAK

Feedback: Themes and Choices


?

Section 2: From Wessex to the Middle East, early pioneers

Pioneers of Aerial Archaeology

The Aerial View

•William Stukeley

•Avebury (1743)

•Primacy of aerial viewpoint in landscape ascetics

•Romantics vision from above



Origins

•Civilian and military ballooning from 1860s onward

•Cpt Henry Elsdale Series of air photographs of military sites in 1880s



Origins•Lt Henry Sharpe first aerial photograph of an archaeological site•Royal Engineers, 1906 Stonehenge photographs•Published in Archaeologia in 1907, but little impact



Aerial Photography in the Great War


• Although many individual balloon, kite and aircraft enthusiasts took photographs in the early 20th century, air-photography came into its own in the Great War

• Many early archaeologists were first exposed to air photography and its potential as part of their war service

• The technology of flight, photography and interpretation developed immensely as war progressed




• Early photography by RFC officers ad hoc and unofficial

• Official recognition followed and photography became a part of the process of identifying enemy deployments and positions

• Mapping both British and German trench networks and of production of up to date maps was a key function of aerial photography (Many French maps were Napoleonic in origin!)




• The role of the observer/gunner/photographer developed

• Key to the advancement of the use of photographs was the development of techniques of interpretation and the role of the experienced air photograph interpreter

• Individual service personnel began to notice archaeological features during military flights and on military photographs


OGS Crawford and the British Revolution


• OGS Crawford (1886-1957)

• The eccentric pioneer of aerial archaeology and the practice of archaeology in the field (as opposed to excavation)

• A varied pre-war career as a geographer and archaeologist, partly in the Middle East

• War service in the RFC as an observer/mapper




• Post WW1 became first Ordnance Survey archaeologist

• Instrumental in updating mapping of antiquities on OS maps

• Made full use of OS resources and a network of amateur pilot/photographers to investigate archaeology from the air

• Founded journal Antiquity in 1927, published many results of early air photography




Alexander Keiller

• Working with philanthropist Alexander Keiller researched and published Wessex from the Air in 1928

• Involved in Keiller’s work at Avebury

• Instrumental in discovery of Woodhenge from the air

• Codified the practice of air photographs in archaeology for first time




• An eccentric figure (Uncle Oggs) but hugely influential on a generation of young interwar archaeologists that shaped the development of British archaeology

• A utopian communist, acolyte of HG Wells and friend of V. Gordon Childe

• From a generation that believed the past was fully knowable and archaeological knowledge finite.

• Air photographs was his lens on the past


Antoine Poidebard, surveying the Levant


http://www.usj.edu.lb/poidebard/muse.htm

• 1878 – 1955

• Jesuit missionary priest working in Armenia in 1904

• Worked for the French military mission to the Caucuses from 1917

• French representative to the Armenian government

• Helped rescue Armenians from Turkish genocide in 1924




• Identified faint traces of ancient structures from the air during flights across desert

• Working in Lebanon with the French air force from 1925

• He developed new techniques of air photography relying on low oblique light to reveal faint features

• Poidebard’s techniques relied on precise flying, innovative photographic emulsions, filters and techniques to accentuate slight details on the ground




• Working on Syria in the 1920s

• Between 1925 and 1932 fixed the route of the imperial limes of Bosra in the central desert of Syria around Palmyra

• From 1932 to 1942 his work focused on Roman remains in the Euphrates and the Orontes valleys




• In the 1930s his attention turned to North Africa

• He flew extensively in what is now Libya photographing Phoenician ports

• Working with French navy divers he identified submerged remains of former Phoenician towns and cities




• Legacy an extraordinary collection of photographs documenting a now largely lost landscape

• Technical mastery and innovation


Aerial Archaeology by 1939


• By the outbreak of WW2 in 1939 aerial photography a mature, technically advanced discipline

• The strategic and tactical importance of air photography to the military recognised

• The use of aerial survey and the types of archaeological phenomena visible on photographs reasonable well understood

• It even found its way into popular fiction

• Neville Shute – So Distained (1928),

• An Old Captivity (1940)



Further Study

• Suggested Reading

Barber, M. (2011). A History of Aerial Photography and Archaeology: Mata Hari's Glass Eye and Other Stories. English Heritage.

Hauser, K. (2009). Bloody Old Britain: OGS Crawford and the Archaeology of Modern Life By. Granta Books.

Shute, N. (1940 – republished 2009). An Old Captivity. Vintage Books. London.


Archaeology from the Air: Lecture 1, Nottingham Autumn 2014

Education

Transcript of Archaeology from the Air: Lecture 1, Nottingham Autumn 2014