Mapping with Aerial Photographs: Recording the Past, the Present, and the Invisible at Marj Rabba, Israel

Abstract

A rapidly expanding array of innovative technologies, combined with traditional techniques, allow more sophisticated photographic and photogrammetric techniques to document and analyze archaeological features, sites, and landscapes. With multiple ways to put a camera aloft over archaeological sites and landscapes, aerial photographs are more than a “bird's eye view.” Over five seasons at the Chalcolithic Period (c. 4500–3700 b.c.e.) site of Marj Rabba in the lower Galilee of Israel, a variety of tools were used to record the excavations, the survey, and the landscape. Satellites, historical aerial photographic archives, fixed wing unmanned aerial vehicles, rotary-wing unmanned aerial vehicles, poles, and terrestrial hand-held photography and photogrammetry, are combined in order to comprehensively record multiple facets of this early settlement.