On the use of historical archive of aerial photographs for the discovery and interpretation of ancient hidden linear cultural relics in the alluvial plain of eastern Henan, China

tHidden linear ancient cultural relics were discovered in the alluvial plain of Eastern Henan province(China) using historical archive of aerial photographs and further confirmed by regional features, histori-cal documents and recent archaeological progress. The discovered relics included large-scale man-madeditches, canals and dock relics in Shangqiu and circular moat relics in Luyi. According to historical docu-ments and archaeological researches, we discussed the cultural types and natures of the relics discoveredby remote sensing images. On this basis, more pertinent and operable interpretation marks were pro-posed focusing on hidden linear ancient cultural relics in the alluvial plain. To improve the interpretationof the traditional crop, soil and shadow marks, we also included indexes of scale, continuity, shape andclustering. Our research highlights the macroscopic and spectrographic observation capability of remotesensing in discovering large-scale, massive, surface distribution of ancient cultural relics. In the test area,the solution of image interpretation was proposed through a combined feature identification of scale,continuity, shape and clustering. The derived thematic map demonstrated that the proposed solution iseffective for discovering ancient remains in the alluvial plain of eastern Henan, China