Since the beginning of aerial photography, researchers have used all kinds of devices ranging from pigeons, kites, poles and balloons to rockets in order to take cameras aloft and remotely gather aerial data needed for a combination of research goals. To date, many of these unmanned devices are still used, mainly to gather archaeologically relevant information from relatively low altitudes, enabling so-called low-altitude aerial photography (LAAP). Besides providing a concise overview of the unmanned LAAP platforms commonly used in archaeological research, this paper considers the drawbacks and advantages of every device and provides an extensive reference list.

During the past 100 years, various devices have been developed and applied in order to acquire archaeologically useful aerial imagery from low altitudes (e.g. balloons, kites, poles).This paper introduces Helikite aerial photography (HAP), a new form of close-range aerial photography suitable for site or defined area photography, based on a camera suspended from a Helikite: a combination of both a helium balloon and kite wings. By largely overcoming the drawbacks of conventional kite- and balloon-based photography, HAP allows for a very versatile, remotely controlled approach to low-altitude aerial photography (LAAP). In addition to a detailed outline of the whole HAP system, its working procedure and possible improvements, some of the resulting imagery is shown to demonstrate the usefulness of HAP for several archaeological applications.

Taking a photograph is often considered to be an indispensable procedural step in many archaeological fields (e.g. excavating), whereas some sub-disciplines (e.g. aerial archaeology) often consider photographs to be the prime data source. Whether they were acquired on the ground or from the air, digital cameras save with each photograph the exact date and time of acquisition and additionally enable to store the camera’s geographical location in specific metadata fields. This location is typically obtained from GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) receivers, either operating in continuous mode to record the path of the camera platform, or the position is observed for each exposure individually. Although such positional information has huge advantages in archiving the imagery, this approach has several limits as it does not record the complete exterior orientation of the camera. More specifically, the essential roll, pitch and yaw camera angles are missing, thus the viewing direction and the camera rotation around it. Besides enabling to define the exact portion of the scene that was photographed (essential for proper archiving), these parameters can also aid the subsequent orthophoto production workflows and even guide photo acquisition. This paper proposes a cost-effective hard- and software solution (camera position: 2.5 m and orientation in static conditions: maximally 2°, both at 1σ) to record all indispensable exterior orientation parameters during image acquisition. After the introduction of the utilized hardware components, the software that allows recording and estimating these parameters as well as embedding them into the image metadata is introduced. Afterwards, the obtainable accuracy in both static (i.e. terrestrial) and dynamic (i.e. airborne) conditions are calculated and assessed. Finally, the good use of this solution for different archaeological purposes will be detailed and commented where needed, while an outlook on future developments finalizes this article.

The main purpose of any aerial photo archive is to allow quick access to images based on content and location. Therefore, next to a description of technical parameters and depicted content, georeferencing of every image is of vital importance. This can be done either by identifying the main photographed object (georeferencing of the image content) or by mapping the center point and/or the outline of the image footprint. The paper proposes a new image archiving workflow. The new pipeline is based on the parameters that are logged by a commercial, but cost-effective GNSS/IMU solution and processed with in-house-developed software. Together, these components allow one to automatically geolocate and rectify the (oblique) aerial images (by a simple planar rectification using the exterior orientation parameters) and to retrieve their footprints with reasonable accuracy, which is automatically stored as a vector file. The data of three test flights were used to determine the accuracy of the device, which turned out to be better than 1° for roll and pitch (mean between 0.0 and 0.21 with a standard deviation of 0.17–0.46) and better than 2.5° for yaw angles (mean between 0.0 and −0.14 with a standard deviation of 0.58–0.94). This turned out to be sufficient to enable a fast and almost automatic GIS-based archiving of all of the imagery.

Th. Pola, H. Kröger, B. Rasink, J. Reinhard, M. al-Balawnah, M. Abu Abila, A preliminary report of the Tulul adh-Dhahab (Wadi az-Zarqa) survey and excavation seasons 2005 - 2011. Annual of the Department of Antiquities of Jordan 57, 2013 (2016), 81-96.

J. Reinhard, 3D-Dokumentation mit Drohne. In: M. Sauter (Hrsg.), Surenenpass. Archäologie und Geschichte in Attinghausen. Archäologische Prospektion - Archaeological Survey 1 (Hochwald 2016), 172-183. For the 3D models see https://sketchfab.com/archaeobotics/collections/attinghausen-geissruggen-ur-schweiz.

team completed their sixth campaign in Hierapolis, Turkey. After the intensive survey in 2011, focus was returned to excavations, with some additional surveying, and the implementation of new methodology. The article features a brief overview of the 2012 excavation, of advances in photogrammetric documentation, as well as temporary resultes of the various bone analysis.