Antichistica 29 | Archeologia 6
e-ISSN 2610-9344 | ISSN 2610-8828
ISBN [ebook] 978-88-6969-517-9 | ISBN [print] 978-88-6969-518-6
Peer review | Open access 157
Submitted 2021-01-18 | Accepted 2021-03-05 | Published 2021-03-31
© 2021 | cb Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution alone
DOI 10.30687/978-88-6969-517-9/007
Stolen Heritage
Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Illicit Traficking of Cultural
Heritage in the EU and the MENA Region
edited by Arianna Traviglia, Lucio Milano, Cristina Tonghini,
Riccardo Giovanelli
Satellite Technologies for
Monitoring Archaeological
Sites at Risk
Deodato Tapete
Agenzia Spaziale Italiana
Francesca Cigna
Agenzia Spaziale Italiana
Abstract Satellite technologies are increasingly used to track looting in remote and in-
accessible archaeological sites and assess damage to heritage. Evidence gathered in our
study proves a growing user uptake of these technologies, beyond the specialist remote
sensing community, but also that a more synergistic use of optical and radar data is re-
quired. The advantages of such an approach to satellite monitoring are demonstrated on
Apamea, Syria. Current limitations and future perspectives are outlined, as an entry point
to a comprehensive review published by the authors in the referenced journal article,
that the readers are encouraged to refer to for a more in-depth and specialist discussion.
Keywords Looting. Archaeological remote sensing. Satellites. Change detection. Fea-
ture extraction. Pattern recognition. Google Earth. Synthetic Aperture Radar. Sentinel-2.
COSMO-SkyMed.
Summary 1 Introduction. – 2 State of the Art and User Uptake. – 3 Synergy Between
Optical and Radar Satellite Technologies. – 4 Multi-temporal and Multi-sensor Monitoring
at Apamea, Syria. – 5 Limitations and Future Perspectives.