Remote Sensing
Definition
Locating features from a distance using aerial imagery, satellite data, or airborne LiDAR, before anyone sets foot on the ground.
- Field
- Forensic archaeology
- Methods
- Aerial imagery, satellite, LiDAR
- Timing
- Before ground survey
- Purpose
- Locate features non-invasively
Common questions
Why is remote sensing done before anyone enters a suspected burial site?+
Surveying from a distance avoids disturbing surface evidence or soil that ground-based searching could compromise, and it can reveal anomalies over an area too large to walk systematically first.
What kinds of features can airborne LiDAR reveal that are not visible on the ground?+
LiDAR can strip away vegetation cover computationally and expose subtle ground disturbances, such as old excavation depressions, that are invisible from eye level under foliage.
Related terms
- Geophysical Survey
- Non-invasive subsurface imaging using physical contrasts such as radar reflection, magnetic variation, or electrical resistance.
- Search Strategy
- A structured plan for covering ground systematically so that the probability of detection is known and the absence of a find means...
- Single-Context Recording
- Recording and removing each deposit as its own discrete unit, so the formation sequence of the scene can be reconstructed afterwards.
- Stratigraphy
- The layered record of deposits. In a grave, the cut, the fill, and the body each form contexts that must be read...
- Total Station
- An electronic instrument that simultaneously measures horizontal and vertical angles and distance to a reflective prism, computing three-dimensional coordinates directly. Typical angular...