Towards the Use of DESIS for Landscape Archaeology: A Case Study from Konya, Turkey

Kurzfassung

Over the last 30-40 years, archaeology has moved from being focused on excavation of individual sites, to analyse broader patterns in archaeological sites at regional level. This branch is called “landscape archaeology”, and looks at the interaction among ancient human communities. Remote sensing played a key role in this area, but the use of spaceborne imaging spectrometers has been limited until recently due to the lack of state-of-the-art sensors. This paper presents the first assessment of the DLR Earth Observation Imaging Spectrometer (DESIS), mounted on the International Space Station, for the identification of archaeological sites through semi-automated detection of spectra associated with anthropogenic soils (“anthrosols”) in the area of Konya, Turkey.