MIVIS Hyperspectral Sensors for the Detection and GIS Supported Interpretation of Subsoil Archaeological Sites

In recent years, Italian researchers have paid particular attention to the use of airborne hyperspectral sensors applied to archaeology, where the MIVIS sensor has found large application proving to be a very important complementary source of information for archaeological goals. In this paper, the results of research based in Aquileia (northeast Italy) are presented. The spectral content of the MIVIS images has been used to give prominence to the archaeological traces on the base of the different spectral characteristics of the terrain and the vegetation, allowing the detection of an elevated number of surface features. The paper will describe the various processes that have been applied to the images according to the different environmental situations: Vegetation Indices have allowed detection of traces over several types of vegetated surfaces; Soil Index has supported discoveries over bare soil; and Principal Component Analysis provided help in terms of better discrimination of contiguous surfaces.