PLANNING A PROGRAMME OF AERIAL SURVEY

Attention in this chaper turns to the planning of a survey programme and in Chapters 4 and 5 to the resources and

procedures needed to make it a success. The advice has been structured on the assumption that few countries will have – for some years at least – a state funded national flying programme like that in Britain, nor large-scale regionally-funded aerial survey like that in some parts of Germany. More probably the pattern will resemble that of local and regional aerial survey in Britain, with regionally based flying programmes of 10-30 hours a year supported by a variety of academic and other funding. In reality, 10 hours a year barely qualifies as a ‘programme’, though it

might meet limited local needs or keep a long term project ticking over. Around 50 hours, on the other hand, would provide

reasonable coverage for a region the size of Tuscany or Wales, or for a relatively small country such as Holland or Belgium. Of course, useful work could be done on less, and there would be no shortage of worthwhile projects if more air time could be made available.

A medium-scale operation of this kind would almost certainly use locally hired aircraft and be carried out in the first instance by archaeologists and pilots who are ‘learning on the job’. With this in mind the advice offered here has drawn especially on the present author’s own experience, starting with a few hours of flying each summer in the 1970s, then rising to several years of involvement in a ‘local’ (county-based) programme of 20-30 hours a year, and finally to a decade or so of flying for 60-70

hours a year across the whole of Wales. The advice – addressed directly to the reader – will be resolutely practical, with the focus on common problems and everyday experiences rather than unusual happenings or specialist applications.

The best single piece of advice, of course, is to seek some kind of formal training in aerial survey, like that offered at the training schools that have been organised in various parts of Europe since the mid 1990s. If this is not possible, try to fly first with – or take advice from – someone who is already carrying out

archaeological air survey, whether at home or elsewhere in Europe. In this context the members of the international Aerial Archaeology Research Group (AARG) and of the

ArchaeoLandscapes Europe project will be more than willing to help through internet or other forms of contact

(www.univie.ac.at/aarg and www.archaeolandscapes.eu).

Thereafter the best advice is to remain an eternal student, learning something from every mistake and every new experience, both in the air and on the ground afterwards.

Firstly, though, a few words of caution. Almost any programme of aerial survey will take years to mature, demanding both

patience and perseverance. Worthwhile results may come quite quickly in some areas, especially in countries where aerial

survey has yet to establish itself as a regular part of the search for archaeological information. But those initial gains will not continue to come, or the exploration may fail to achieve its full potential, if the programme is not supported by clear and

realisable objectives, matched to the characteristics of the study area and of course to the resources available. The cost of

equipment and facilities may be substantial – cameras and photographic accessories, navigational aids, computers and related harware and software, along with computer equipment and related storage and library space. Plus of course the direct and indirect costs of flying – the hire of aircraft and pilots, the cost of films and processing (or nowadays of memory cards, high quality computer screens and related software for

processing and archiving of the mass of digital data now being collected each year). But ‘resources’ must also include skill, time and attention to the planning the work, and to the post-flight

processes which give wider meaning to the few hours of excitement in the air.

Aerial research should be matched to the area being studied – its size, geography, geology, soils, climate and land use (all of which affect the aerial visibility of sites), and of course to its known archaeology. There may, for instance, be ways in which aerial survey could test existing archaeological perceptions about the area, or open up entirely fresh lines of enquiry. Aerial recording might be able to help in the presentation, management and conservation of the area’s archaeological sites. Advice on such things should obviously be sought from archaeological colleagues and from existing heritage records and record keepers. Time should also be allowed for feeding information and ideas back to those who have provided this kind of help.

The lesson here is to form links and partnerships from the very outset. If you can help other people or organisations with their concerns, perhaps in having informative aerial views for

publication or publicity material, you may win their support and goodwill for yours. The more ‘useful’ your work can be (for other archaeologists, of course, but also or for those working in related field such as landscape studies or the promotion of tourism) the more widely it will become known and the more likely you will be

to accumulate at least small amounts of money to finance your aerial work. Even so, you may need to put real effort into fund-raising, by applying for academic grants or sponsorship, or by cost sharing where your own work can be made directly useful to others. Be aware, however, that direct ‘commercial’ activity, as distinct from research, may run counter to aerial regulations in your own country – for the past decade and more in Britain, for instance, official flights for aerial photography can only be made with pilots holding a Commercial Pilot’s License (CPL) and

through aircraft contractors holding an Air Operator’s Certificate (AOC).

Naturally, the more links you can form with archaeological colleagues on the ground, the more ideas or target areas they are likely to suggest and the more productive may become your precious hours in the air. The more ‘rounded’, too, will become both your own and your colleagues’ archaeology.

It is not particularly difficult to get into the air, nor to take

acceptable aerial photographs. But the wise beginner will want to learn the ‘mysteries of the art’, doing things in the right way and above all at the right time – for instance catching low light in the winter months or at the start or end of the day in summer. One of the first lessons is that summer cropmarks occur sporadically and often unpredictably, so that it is necessary to return day after day, week after week, year after year in order to realise even a fraction of any area’s potential. You must learn to improvise

when the weather turns against you in the middle of a flight, when the sun refuses to shine, or when one year’s observations seem to another. You must train your eye and mind to recognise, year after year, more things which may be of archaeological

significance while filtering out those which are not. You must retain the intuition and sense of enquiry to seek out – to expect – new things every time you go into the air. And you must have the determination and perseverance to carry the task through on the ground and in the office afterwards, however tedious that post-flight work may seem at times.

98 The aerial archaeologist can maximise the benefits of time in the air by having a range of target types to photograph as opportunities arise.

a) Cropmarks in spring and summer (a Romano-British settlement).

b) Earthworks in low sunlight (a deserted medieval village).

c) Monitoring of legally protected sites (a hillfort and overlying medieval castle).

d) Landscapes an archaeological sites under snow in winter.

e) Towns and villages, in this case with a surviving medieval street pattern.

f) Country mansions with their gardens and stables etc.

g) Early field systems surviving in the countryside.

h) Industrial sites, in this case an endangered cider brewery.

Fig 3. 1 A ‘portfolio’ of potential targets

b

g

h a

c

e d

f