AERIAL ARCHAEOLOGY AT THE IoA PRAGUE

THE AERIAL PHOTOGRAPH ARCHIVE

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Established in 1992, when aerial surveys began and when for the first time aerial photographs were taken of both buried and visible monuments in the Czech landscape.

THE AERIAL PHOTOGRAPH LIBRARY HAS TWO PARTS:

1.(a) An archive of negatives, slides, compact discs and digital video recordings

1.(b) A library of aerial photographs arranged by cadastre

2. Textual and image databases

At present, the Aerial Photograph Library contains pictorial documentation of around 1000 sites, of which half are new discoveries of sites identified with the aid of crop- and soil- marks. Other sites fall within various categories of historic landscapes, and the archive also contains pictures of natural ecozones and examples of landscape types in the areas of interest covered by particular projects.

Fig. 1. The file for the cadastre of Uhy, kept in the aerial photograph library. Such files contain not only a selection of aerial photographs, but also cadastral maps showing the locations of sites for which photodocumentation is included, and in some cases ground-level photographs, surface collection and geophysical survey results and excavation reports.Enlarge

Fig. 2. The title page of an image database of aerial photographs. The database contains files composed from text forms, and which contain the most important information relevant to specific sites, as well as colour/monochrome photographs, and cadastral maps showing the site topography at a scale of 1:50 000. Enlarge

In the following part of the Archive page we offer an assortment of aerial images taken over various sites and monuments in Bohemia, and deposited in the Institute of Archaeology, Czech Academy of Sciences. (Copyright: Institute of Archaeology, Prague, Czech Republic)

BOHEMIA (Czech Republic)

DOLNÍ HRADIŠTĚ Hillfort	TŘÍSOV Oppidum	LŠTĚNÍ Hillfort
HELFENBURK Castle	MNICHOVICE Moated site	KRATOCHVÍLE Chateau
ŽATEC Hillfort - historical city centre	PRAHA Castle - historical city centre	NOVÉ MĚSTO N. METUJÍ Chateau - historical city centre
ŘÍP - ST.GEORGE Solitary churche	CHVOJEN Solitary churche	ZLATÁ KORUNA Monastery
ČESKÝ KRUMLOV Historical city centre	DIVICE Village and manorial palace	STRUŽNICE Field system