Airborne Scanning

M. Doneus, W. Neubauer:
"Aerial Archaeology and Airborne Laser-Scanning at the Iron Age hillfort Schwarzenbach-Burg", VIAVIAS, 02/2008 23.07.2008

Recent technical developments suitable for archaeological prospection have been successfully applied in Schwarzenbach-Burg. Apart from the geophysical survey aerial photography was used so far to monitor the archaeological site and its surroundings and to measure its topography. The prospecting archaeologist from VIAS cooperating with the aerial archaeologist from the Department for Prehistoric and Mediaeval Archaeology of the University of Vienna have been using airborne laser-scanning to look through the forest partly covering the late Iron Age hillfort and its surrounding. 
Aerial archaeology and geophysical prospecting come to their limits in wooded areas, which results in the fact that we usually know only large and well-preserved sites in forests. Systematic detection of archaeological sites in woodland has therefore until recently been one of the unsolved problems in archaeological prospection resulting in a big deficit of archaeological knowledge form forested areas. Over the past few years, airborne laser-scanning (ALS) also known as LIDAR (Light Direction and Ranging), has turned out to be a potential tool for recognising and measuring topographic earthwork features in wooded areas. The resulting detailed digital terrain model provides a detailed insight into the archaeological structures still surviving in the topography.
The cooperation demonstrates that only an integration of different prospection methods will enable effective heritage management and archaeological research.