Something interesting showed up on a recent aerial photo of a field near me. I am only prepared to say it is in Southern England. What appears to be the outline of a building perhaps. At the beginning of the 1900's a Roman temple was found 800 yards away from here and has been excavated at least twice. I have searched the archaeology and buildings records for the area and there are no records of a building ever standing here from any historical period. I can tell you that it measures 113 meters in length and just over 20 meters in width - rather large! Is this a possible unknown Roman Villa? Also of note...it is aligned east to west.....
I have a few ideas but it could just been something mundane. Whatever it is, it is man-made.
Anyone have any ideas? I want to at least have a firm idea before i approach the county archaeology unit/the land owner. Any help would be appreciated!
the marks look wetter at first pass. Possibly more thicker veg in the dark areas. Wouldn't walls give the reverse of that? There is something that looks like an media artifact immediately above that crosses multiple fields.
Can robbed out walls result in deeper soil and better veg patterns? I'm just a geologist so I don't know. The "wall" width looks about right for a large CAT blade so if I saw them in Canada I might think they were reclaimed exploration trenches
Thanks for the responses guys. There was a case on time team not so long ago where they discovered the massive somerset roman villa in the farmers field (the location escapes me at the moment). Aerial photos of that site revealed darker patterns showing the outline of the villa. Im not sure if something similar is going on here. Its a strange artefact to say the least. There are no records of anything ever being there thats why im interested. I did think they may have been some sort of ditches or something associated with the farm, I will approach the farmer soon and find out. Keep the ideas coming though!
Do you have access to other photomosaic servers such as Terraserver? Sometimes it can be useful to compare the images in Google with other sources.
I would be intersted in tracking down the eposide you mention to see if Google or TerraServer show the features you mention. Since my background is geology I have differnt goals and experience in airphoto interpretation. I very interested in seeing archeaological examples.
WOnder if any sites are every licky enough to have a series of Hyperion images across them! That would be blind luck since the swaths are so narrow, but the hyperspectral data could be very sensitive to changes in stress in the veg.
Prof Mick Aston explained crop marks with something like: - where a wall or hard feature is intact in the soil, the soil above is shallower than the surroundings, the plants above get less water and nutrient, the plants dry out and die more quickly, so creating a light crop mark. - where there is a ditch in the natural subsoil, or a wall foundation has been robbed away, the soil depth allows for increased growth, so dark crop marks. The gist: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cropmarks
Thanks everyone, RE the prev post...I was thinking along the lines of robbed out wall lines. I am currently composing a letter to the land owner. I shall update as and when I receive a reply!
Hi Sam, I think the TT dig you're refering to is the one above. Certainly there's no harm approaching the land owner, he may already be able to tell you what was there anyway.
