Chances of Airborne SAR in the Investigation of Buried Archaeological Sites in Moist Soil in Bavaria

Abstract

In the last few years, the use of Synthetic-Aperture-Radar (SAR) has become quite widespread owing to a dramatic improvement of the resolution of the corresponding sensors. After the first tests at sites in Syria (Linck, 2013; Linck et al., 2013), several further works have been published in recent years (e.g. Chen et al., 2016; Stewart et al., 2016; Lasaponara & Masini, 2019; Tapete & Cigna, 2019). All of these previous studies have two things in common: they are mainly investigating sites in desert and/or arid region and they are using satellite SAR data. With the use of Airborne SAR data, the resolution can be further improved due to the lower flight altitude, especially by applying a circular flight. Within this project, the chances of detecting buried archaeological remains in humid regions of Bavaria shall be investigated. All results are in-situ checked by previous GPR surveys of the Bavarian State Department of Monuments and Sites (BLfD).