Spatial Research and Geomatic Resources Applied to the Archaeology of the Farafra Oasis (Western Desert, Egypt)

Archaeological research in the desert areas of North Africa has long employed multidisciplinary field and laboratory methods. Increasingly, high precision instruments for mapping archaeological sites and surrounding landscapes over large areas have been used. The Italian Archaeological Mission in the Farafra Oasis - Egypt (IAMFO) of the Sapienza University of Rome benefits from three decades of experience during which it has kept pace with the latest developments in fieldwork techniques. Geomatic techniques, as used by the Area di Geodesia e Geomatica of the same university, are particularly important for archaeological research concerned with large geographical areas, although innovative approaches appropriate for the scale of the work need to be used. This paper will show how survey work was organised in a number of stages, from the creation of accurate maps, to photoplans of significant structures and to DEMs of the different locations of finds. Processing the cartographic data from the Wadi el Obeiyid, moreover, made it possible to hypothesize which areas would have been suitable for human settlement, and these will form the focus of future surveys.