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CORONA Satellite Imagery-based Digital Archaeological Atlas of the Middle East

 

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CORONA Satellite Imagery-based Digital Archaeological Atlas of the Near East 

 

January 2011 Project Update - Approximately 1200 images have had the necessary ground control information collected and readied for final processing. Of these over 200 are ready for publication - as orthorectified images - through an ArcGIS Imager Server service.  This service will enable a variety of access methods including a WMS, KML files for viewing Google Earth, ArcGIS.com and a dedicated mapping website. Each image will be available in the National Imagery Transformation Format (NITF) with embedded RPC information enabling a full range of photogrammetric processing including DEM generation from overlapping images, 3D feature mensuration and orthorectification against any available DEM. The RPC coefficients can also be adjusted against user-supplied ground control to the position and orientation properties of the image before orthorectification.  
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Archaeologists have long appreciated the extraordinary power of aerial photography and satellite imagery to aid in the discovery and interpretation of archaeological sites, the recognition of larger cultural landscape features such as roads, canals, and field systems, as well as the mapping and management of cultural resources. However, in the Near East, no imagery of adequate spatial resolution was available to archaeologists until 1995, when a large archive of US intelligence satellite images from the 1960s and 1970s, known as CORONA, were declassified and made publicly available. These images provide stunning, high resolution views of the landscape, and have been employed recently in a handful of innovative archaeological projects in the Near East. In these cases, use of CORONA imagery has revolutionized our understanding of the quantity and distribution of archaeological remains, fundamentally transformed field methodologies, and vastly improved our understanding of settlement histories. Moreover, because CORONA images are over 30 years old, they preserve a picture of archaeological sites prior to their destruction by recent industrialization and urban expansion, making CORONA imagery an absolutely unique resource that can never be replaced by new technologies.

While the value of CORONA imagery is now widely recognized by Near Eastern archaeologists, the raw, unprocessed images that are sold by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) contain extreme spatial distortions that make integrating the images into regional GIS databases or using them to map individual archaeological sites all but impossible without a high level of technical skill.  These challenges combined with the sophisticated and prohibitively expensive software and hardware requirements necessary to work with the data have meant that only a handful of specialists have made use of CORONA imagery in Near Eastern archaeology and other fields.  Furthermore, almost no researchers have utilized the stereo capabilities of CORONA imagery, which enable landscapes to be viewed in three-dimensions and high-resolution digital elevation data to be extracted directly from the imagery.

The figure above shows the extent of images ready for publication as of January 2011.

 

This project will provide the development and distribution of a digital CORONA satellite imagery-based archaeological atlas of the Near East.   We will apply newly developed orthorectification techniques to hundreds of CORONA images that will correct their spatial distortions, enable images to be viewed in 3D, and produce a high-resolution digital elevation model (DEM) of the study area.  In its final form, the atlas will provide:

  1. highly-accurate, high-resolution (2-meter) digital CORONA imagery for the entire Near East
  2. stereo-ready CORONA images that can be viewed in 3D (with appropriate software) for about 75% of this area
  3. 10-meter resolution digital elevation model (DEM) where stereo imagery is available
  4. a navigational guide showing political boundaries, towns and cities, modern roads, and the location of several hundred key archaeological sites
  5. an interactive guidebook providing examples of how CORONA imagery is used in archaeology and recommendations for integrating it into research projects and teaching

The atlas and guidebook will be available to archaeologists and other researchers as a set of DVDs and via the Internet through an easy-to-use online web mapping site. Both the DVD and web version will provide imagery and topographic data in multiple formats to enable them to be integrated into most common Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software or simply viewed on a home computer. The online atlas will enable users to pan and zoom to a location or region of interest, select CORONA images in various formats, and easily export images for use in publications and presentations. The DVD version will allow researchers to host the database locally and thus easily incorporate CORONA imagery into existing field projects, GIS-based mapping initiatives, and other investigations.

Unlike atlas projects which simply aim to produce maps of known archaeological sites (e.g., Talbert [ed.] 2000; Reichert [ed.] 1977-1993), this project will provide the archaeological community with the necessary tools to discover, map, and interpret archaeological sites and their surrounding landscapes.  The widespread availability of CORONA imagery and the ease with which it will be utilized will likely facilitate the discovery of thousands of previously unknown archaeological sites, substantially change our understanding of older regional survey projects, offer new perspectives on known sites, and aid in the documentation and mapping of the cultural landscape features throughout the Near East. 

"Stereo analysis, DEM extraction and orthorectification of CORONA satellite imagery: archaeological applications from the Near East", Jesse Casana & Jackson Cothren, Antiquity 82(2008): 732-749.

 
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Dr. Jesse Casana - Department of Anthropology, University of Arkansas

Dr. Jack Cothren - Department of Geosciences, University of Arkansas

Jack Cothren Jesse Casana Adam Barnes Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies CAST University of Arkansas CORONA Satellite Imagery-based Digital Archaeological Atlas of the Near East