Abstract
This chapter describes a method for identifying probable locations of archaeological sites over a wide area based on detecting subtle anomalies in vegetative cover through a statistically based analysis of remotely sensed data from multiple sources. This statistical analysis is further refined and elaborated to compensate for potential slight miss-registrations between the remote sensing data sources and the archaeological site location data. Data quantization approaches (required by the statistical analysis procedure) are explored, and a superior data quantization approach based on a unique image segmentation algorithm is identified. The effectiveness of the method is demonstrated with test data from Santa Catalina Island off the southern California coast.
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Acknowledgments
This work was performed under the project “Automating and Enhancing Protocols for the Development of Signatures for Archaeological Sites Using Publicly Available NASA Imagery,” supported by grant number 07-SAP07-0013 from NASA’s Space Archaeology program.
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Tilton, J.C., Comer, D.C. (2013). Identifying Probable Archaeological Sites on Santa Catalina Island, California Using SAR and Ikonos Data. In: Mapping Archaeological Landscapes from Space. SpringerBriefs in Archaeology(), vol 5. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6074-9_20
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6074-9_20
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