Stereoscopic view, extracting DEM and cartography for archaeological purposes from Ikonos stereo pair: a case from Hierapolis of Phrygia territory (Turkey)

This work analyses methods and problems connected with the elaboration of Ikonos stereo high-resolution satellite images to create a large scale cartography for the archaeological research. The paper show the case of Hierapolis of Phrygia (Turkey), where archaeological surveys, developed by the Italian Archaeological Mission, are in progress; particularly, this methodology has been used on an area (25 sq km) of the old territory of Hierapolis situated between modern villages of Yeniköy and Küçükdereköy, of which neither cartographies suitable for surveys on the ground nor aerophotogrammetrical covers were available. In this area there are many considerable archaeological presences particularly concerning an Hellenistic and Roman big village and its necropolises and an old Turkish destroyed settlement. An Ikonos stereo pair has been used to obtain a stereoscopic view of the entire area from where it would have been possible, after a data processing, to get a space map and to extract vectorial elements (modern topography, hydrology, archaeological evidences and traces, etc.) for the production of a cartography for archaeological research in the tolerances of a 1:10000 scale.