Active Satellite Sensors in Cultural Heritage Research: The Use of SAR for Archaeological Prospection

This paper provides an overview on the application of satellite synthetic aperture radar (SAR) technology in archaeology. The growing developments of space SAR technologies in terms of observational capabilities (spatial, spectral, radiometric, and temporal coverage) had made the use of these technologies very attractive for archaeological investigations. Although several achievements have been made in recent years on the basis of pioneering efforts addressed to the assessment of the potentiality of the L-, C-, and X-band SAR in archaeology, the full capability of these technologies for archaeological site detection is still incompletely evaluated until now. Moreover, significant advances are expected from the most recent satellite data available at 25 cm in X-band (TerraSAR) and at 1 m in multipolarized L-band (PALSAR). These enhanced characteristics, in terms of spatial resolution and radiometric quality, take the most recent SAR technologies to a new level for archaeological applications, addressed to object detection and target recognition.