New technology

For nearly one hundred years aeroplanes have provided archaeologists with stable platforms for aerial reconnaissance and photography, which has produced invaluable information. Indeed even before aeroplanes people had been taking photographs from balloons, and almost as long as they have been taking photographs they have been taking them of historical or archaeological features such as Stonehenge. Within English Heritage the bulk of reconnaissance photography is still carried out using a hand-held camera from a low-flying plane and this is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.

This does not mean that we are not aware of and investigating other sources of information on the historic environment. Over the years we have looked at many new techniques and innovations and evaluated them as to their usefulness. Below are a couple of examples beginning with the most recent and currently the most successful.

Lidar

Airborne lidar (Light Detection And Ranging) measures the height of the ground surface and other features in large areas of landscape with a resolution and accuracy hitherto unavailable, except through labour-intensive field survey or photogrammetry. It provides, for the first time, highly detailed and accurate models of the land surface at metre and sub-metre resolution.
Satellite imagery

For many years people have suggested that satellite imagery could be a valuable resource for prospecting for archaeological sites. Until recent years the resolution of easily available imagery has been insufficient to see most archaeological features, but improvements in recent years mean that this is an area that deserves further attention.

Useful tools

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