Aerial Photography in New Zealand Archaeology

Aerial photographs are most conspicuously of use in discovering or revealing patterns that are not readily seen in the ground view. It is not the purpose of this paper to analyse why that should be so. Generally, archaeologists use this capacity to reveal pattern in several ways: simply to illustrate, where the dramatic revelation of pattern first comes to be useful; to assist in fieldwork; to gather mapping data cheaply, efficiently and more powerfully, to further analyse the data and to consolidate it over wider areas than the single view; and finally, as an archive from which what has been lost in the field can be recovered, and to determine rates and causes of destruction. Basic techniques include the enhancing of the images of surface earthworks, crop and soil marks by the choice of time of day or season, camera viewpoint and the use of different filmstocks. 1 New Zealand has been influenced by both American and English sources in the development of archaeological studies. 2