During the second year of the project “A social and spatial investigation at the Moxomatsi village”- Joint Mobility Projects: New Technologies for Social Science, ISARP 2018-20 - the work team of the University of Salerno (Department of Civil Engineering and Department of Cultural Heritage Sciences) was engaged in South Africa for the documentation of the Bokoni Archaeological Complex. Located in the present province of Mpumalanga, the Bokoni was a pre-colonial South African society, the research will be mainly focused on the study of agricultural settlements characterized by areas where densely walled settlements with roughly circular homesteads linked by walled roads are interspersed among spreads of agricultural terraces. For the particular characteristics of the site, it was decided to acquire the images for the documentation with photogrammetric techniques using two different UAVs: a DJI Mavic 2 Pro and a DJI Phantom 4. The first one, was used to capture the aerial photogrammetric images for a generation of the 3D photogrammetric model of the area. Topographic information for the description of the site was extracted from the 3D model, in particular, from the nadiral orthophoto it was possible to identify and graph the archaeological areas with a greater presence of remains of the villages. On the same area, on the DJI Phantom 4, a Mapir Survey 2 NIR and the corresponding RGB camera were installed. In this way, it was possible to collect information also below the countryside, by extracting vegetative maps (calculating indices as NDVI or GNDVI). The last has contributed to delineate the presence of some archaeological remains even below the countryside level. The aerial photogrammetric processes, in addition, were combined with GNSS-type measurement techniques, measuring a network of 16 artificial targets (GCP) arranged over the entire surveyed area, and therefore the orthophotos and vegetative maps produced are all georeferenced.
Preserving Cultural Landscapes in South Africa: UAV Mapping of a Bokoni Archaeological Complex
Marco Limongiello
Conceptualization
;Alfonso SantorielloSupervision
;Carla FerreyraInvestigation
2021-01-01
Abstract
During the second year of the project “A social and spatial investigation at the Moxomatsi village”- Joint Mobility Projects: New Technologies for Social Science, ISARP 2018-20 - the work team of the University of Salerno (Department of Civil Engineering and Department of Cultural Heritage Sciences) was engaged in South Africa for the documentation of the Bokoni Archaeological Complex. Located in the present province of Mpumalanga, the Bokoni was a pre-colonial South African society, the research will be mainly focused on the study of agricultural settlements characterized by areas where densely walled settlements with roughly circular homesteads linked by walled roads are interspersed among spreads of agricultural terraces. For the particular characteristics of the site, it was decided to acquire the images for the documentation with photogrammetric techniques using two different UAVs: a DJI Mavic 2 Pro and a DJI Phantom 4. The first one, was used to capture the aerial photogrammetric images for a generation of the 3D photogrammetric model of the area. Topographic information for the description of the site was extracted from the 3D model, in particular, from the nadiral orthophoto it was possible to identify and graph the archaeological areas with a greater presence of remains of the villages. On the same area, on the DJI Phantom 4, a Mapir Survey 2 NIR and the corresponding RGB camera were installed. In this way, it was possible to collect information also below the countryside, by extracting vegetative maps (calculating indices as NDVI or GNDVI). The last has contributed to delineate the presence of some archaeological remains even below the countryside level. The aerial photogrammetric processes, in addition, were combined with GNSS-type measurement techniques, measuring a network of 16 artificial targets (GCP) arranged over the entire surveyed area, and therefore the orthophotos and vegetative maps produced are all georeferenced.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
