COMBINATION OF AIRBORNE LASER SCANNING AND OTHER NON-DESTRUCTIVE TECHNIQUES FOR ARCHAEOLOGICAL PROSPECTION

During years 2010-2013 the Czech Office for Surveying, Mapping and Cadastre in cooperation with Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Agriculture of the Czech Republic had acquired a unique dataset based on airborne laser scanning (ALS). This dataset covers the whole area of the Czech Republic and can be nowadays used in archaeology to describe complex areas and to suitably complement earlier findings. This article describes visualization and image processing methods that can be applied on digital terrain models (DTMs) to highlight objects hidden in the landscape. Besides that, other methods for verification of object found in DTM such as aerial photogrammetry, traditional surveying methods etc. are described. The use of these methods is tested in several case studies. Three sites were chosen to represent various objects which can be under archaeological interest. The first is area around the Trebel Castle a battlefield from the Thirty Years' War, the second is a part of old route called "Devil's Furrow" near the town of Sazava and the last is a medieval mining area near the town of Jachymov. Thanks to the analysis of visualized DTM it is possible to understand the landscape evolution including the differentiation between natural processes and human interventions. In case study areas, various visualization methods were applied. The article depicts possibilities, limitations and specifics of documentation of diverse archaeological areas using airborne laser scanning.