Medieval Archaeology Under the Canopy with LiDAR. The (Re)Discovery of a Medieval Fortified Settlement in Southern Italy

Title

Medieval Archaeology Under the Canopy with LiDAR. The (Re)Discovery of a Medieval Fortified Settlement in Southern Italy

Creator(s)

Masini, Nicola

Gizzi, Fabrizio

Biscione, Marilisa

Fundone, Vincenzo

Sedile, Michele

Sileo, Maria

Pecci, Antonio

Lacovara, Biagio

Lasaponara, Rosa

Date

2018

Is Part Of

Remote Sensing

Volume

10

Issue

10

Pages

1598

Language

eng

ISSN

2072-4292

DOI

https://doi.org/10.3390/rs10101598

URI

http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/10/10/1598

Zotero BiDiAr

https://www.zotero.org/groups/5293298/bidiar/items/FSB8IY82/item-list

Abstract

Despite the recognized effectiveness of LiDAR in penetrating forest canopies, its capability for archaeological prospection can be strongly limited in areas covered by dense vegetation for the detection of subtle remains scattered over morphologically complex areas. In these cases, an important contribution to improve the identification of topographic variations of archaeological interest is provided by LiDAR-derived models (LDMs) based on relief visualization techniques. In this paper, diverse LDMs were applied to the medieval site of Torre Cisterna to the north of Melfi (Southern Italy), selected for this study because it is located on a hilly area with complex topography and thick vegetation cover. These conditions are common in several places of the Apennines in Southern Italy and prevented investigations during the 20th century. Diverse LDMs were used to obtain maximum information and to compare the performance of both subjective (through visual inspections) and objective (through their automatic classification) methods. To improve the discrimination/extraction capability of archaeological micro-relief, noise filtering was applied to Digital Terrain Model (DTM) before obtaining the LDMs. The automatic procedure allowed us to extract the most significant and typical features of a fortified settlement, such as the city walls and a tower castle. Other small, subtle features attributable to possible buried buildings of a habitation area have been identified by visual inspection of LDMs. Field surveys and in-situ inspections were carried out to verify the archaeological points of interest, microtopographical features, and landforms observed from the DTM-derived models, most of them automatically extracted. As a whole, the investigations allowed (i) the rediscovery of a fortified settlement from the 11th century and (ii) the detection of an unknown urban area abandoned in the Middle Ages.

cited by

Novel airborne LiDAR-derived digital terrain models in the Emilia-Romagna Region (Italy): potential for archaeological prospection of medieval castles in the Vena del Gesso Romagnola and Valmarecchia