ABSTRACT
Traditional platforms for close-range remote sensing (balloons and kites) have been joined in the last decade by highly sophisticated automated systems (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles – UAVs or drones), providing fully automatic, highly reliable, ready-to-use, pocket-size, multi-sensor and – last but not least – highly affordable equipment with a genuine daily-fly capacity. In the last two decades, archaeologists have been testing both platforms and sensors, in particular for 3D documentation of archaeological excavations, the detailed survey of monuments and historic buildings, the 3D imaging of archaeological sites and landscapes, as well as for aerial exploration, airborne geophysics and Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) -based archaeological survey of woodland areas. The scale of applications has ranged from individual sites to landscapes up to 20/30 km2 in extent. The role of UAV platforms in survey and documentation at a wide range of scales, and in diagnostics more generally, has become a key focus of attention in the inexorably growing field of expertise and practice within archaeological survey and recording.
