Preparing an archaeological field survey: Remote sensing interpretation for herding structures in the Southern Levant

Abstract

Development of archaeological “virtual surveys” using online satellite imagery allows the identification of an increasing number and diversity of data. Coherent procedures are now essential in the preparation of any field study: estimating archaeological potential, gathering and mapping environmental features, and building hypotheses about settlement location and settlement patterns. In this article, we propose methods aimed at developing tools to describe and measure the different elements of pastoral archaeological structures in southern Syria, and quantifying the importance of these structures in the landscape and natural environment. Our thematic case study is the pastoral settlement pattern in the Leja, a basaltic region in southern Syria.

Keywords:

• decision support
• GIS
• herding structures
• south Syria

Acknowledgments

This study was carried out under the PaleoSyr/PaleoLib project (2010–2014) funded by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-France), and with the survey data of Atlas des sites pré- et protohistoriques de Syrie du Sud joint project Direction générale des antiquités et des musées de Syrie (DGAMS) and Mission Archéologique Française en Syrie du Sud, funded by DGAMS and French Ministry of Foreign affairs. Thank you to P. Chang and I. Yaya for the English editing.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Arnaud Ansart

Arnaud Ansart (Ph.D. 2010, University of Paris Sorbonne) is a GIS specialist (3D GIS, GPS, spatial analysis). His main interest is 3D buildings modeling and archaeological predictive analysis.

Frank Braemer

Frank Braemer (Ph.D. 1981, EHESS Paris) is senior archaeology researcher emeritus and former director of the French archaeological project in Southern Syria (1991–2013). He studied the man-environment co-evolution in the Middle Eastern Mediterranean bioclimatic and human context during the Holocene (PaléoSYR project 2010–2014). He is one of the promoters of the Syrian archaeological sites global database (since December 2013). His main interest is in settlement patterns, urbanism, and architecture during the Levantine Bronze Age, and in the emergence of complex societies in the Near East.

Gourguen Davtian

Gourguen Davtian (Ph.D. 1998, University of Nice Sophia Antipolis) is Research engineer, Geomatics Project leader, and GIS specialist (GIS, remote detection, GPS, spatial analysis). During the last ten years, he worked in Central Asia (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan), in the Middle East (Syria, Jordan, Armenia), in the Yemen and in Oman.