Underwater Photogrammetry for Archaeology

Archaeological excavations are often irreversibly destructive, so it is important to accompany them with detailed documentation reflecting the accumulated knowledge of the excavation site. This documentation is usually iconographic and textual. Graphical representations of archaeological sites such as drawings, sketches, watercolors, photographs, topography, and photogrammetry are indispensable for such documentation and are an intrinsic part of an archaeological survey. However, as pointed out by Olivier Buchsenschutz in the introduction to the symposium Images and archaeological surveys, in Arles, France, in 2007 (Buchsenschutz, 2007, Introduction page 5), even a very precise drawing only retains certain observations that support a demonstration, just as a speech retains only some arguments, but this choice is not usually explicit. This somewhat lays the foundation of this work: a survey is both a metrics document and an interpretation of the site by archaeologist.