Best practice approaches for applying satellite imagery for landscape archaeological applications: a case study from the World Heritage Site of Sanchi, India A. Beck a , J. Shaw b , D. Stott c a School of Computing, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK b Institute of Archaeology, UCL, London, WC1H 0PY, UK, c David Stott, Independent Researcher ABSTRACT Satellite imagery is an increasingly important tool for cultural and natural heritage management. It has particular relevance in those areas of the world where the heritage resource is poorly understood. In these areas what is known may be significantly biased: i.e. heritage management strategies may have been skewed towards a specific type of remain (normally monumental architecture). This paper will present work undertaken in the landscape around the UNESCO World Heritage site of Sanchi, a major early-historic Buddhist site in Madhya Pradesh, India. Rather than discuss the merits of individual sensors this paper takes a more holistic approach and examines the 'life-cycle' of satellite imagery for an archaeological project. This means that satellite imagery is viewed not just as a source of archaeological information but also as a data source that can be used to contextualise and interpret the archaeological resource. Hence this paper provides a framework which should allow archaeological investigators to select, manipulate and integrate different satellite sensors to provide information which is fit for purpose. This paper discusses the implications of satellite sensors for different activities, including archaeological prospection, landuse mapping and terrain modeling and considers how the synergies of different satellite and archaeological data can be exploited. Keywords: India, Landscape, Satellite, Prospection, Contour, Landuse, Landsat, Quickbird, Ikonos, Corona, SRTM 1. INTRODUCTION Satellite imagery is starting to play an increasingly important role in landscape archaeological projects [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. At the time of writing there are a range of satellite sensors that provide different imaging products that have archaeological utility. The difficulty for the archaeologist is understanding which products to use and why. In common with other remote sensing devices, images generated from satellite sensors vary as the environmental and vegetation conditions change. It is therefore imperative that for a specific archaeological residue type an appropriate sensor is chosen and the image is collected under favourable environmental conditions. For example, there is no point in trying to detect crop marks (residue type) using a hyper-spectral sensor dedicated to identifying crop stress (appropriate sensor) when there is no crop on the ground (unfavourable environmental conditions). This paper discusses the experiences of the use of satellite imagery for the generation of a range of landscape data-sets for the Sanchi Survey Project (SSP), one of several projects being undertaken by members of the Vidisha Research Group [6]. The Vidisha Research Group (VRG) is an international multi-disciplinary research group engaged in collaborative research in and around the early-historic city site of Vidisha [7] in central India (Longitude 77°45’00’’, Latitude 23°30’00’’). The project focuses on the early-historic city site of Vidisha and the major hilltop Buddhist site of Sanchi, about 8 km to the south. The SSP’s principal research aim was to assess how the introduction of Buddhism during the late centuries BC related to the history of urbanisation at Vidisha, and wider processes such as economic, political and agrarian change. Initial field seasons between 1998 and 2002 involved the systematic detection and recording of archaeological remains across an area of approximately 1000 sq km (c. 30 x 30 km), with a peripheral area covering some 3000 sq km (c. 55 x 55 km) (see Figure 1) in collaboration with the Department of Archaeology, Museums and Archives, Madhya Pradesh, Bhopal. Initial interpretation has focused on patterns in the Buddhist, Brahmanical and Jain Remote Sensing for Environmental Monitoring, GIS Applications, and Geology VII, edited by Manfred Ehlers, Ulrich Michel, Proc. of SPIE Vol. 6749, 674905, (2007) · 0277-786X/07/$18 · doi: 10.1117/12.737553 Proc. of SPIE Vol. 6749 674905-1 Downloaded From: http://proceedings.spiedigitallibrary.org/ on 09/04/2013 Terms of Use: http://spiedl.org/terms