Abstract
Delineation of Archaeological Site Looting Damage in Central Iraq
Track: Archaeology
Author
Looting of archaeological sites has taken place throughout antiquity. This is especially the case on the Central Mesopotamian Plain of Iraq. Such looting has been accelerated since the overthrow of the former Iraqi government and thus the need to document the extent of this damage has become imperative. To aid in this determination imagery from DigitalGlobe's WorldView satellite, with its half meter resolution, was employed to identify over 40,000 individual looting pits at 265 sites. The satellite data were manipulated in ERDAS and the Image Analyst tool in ArcGIS. These data were combined with a GIS database compiled from decades of ground investigations. The observations and delineations obtained have been combined for spatial data analysis involving distribution and density measures using the Spatial Statistics tools in ArcGIS.
Benjamin Richason
Dept. of Geography
720 Fourth Ave. South
St Cloud State University
St Cloud, Minnesota 56301-4498
United States
Phone: (320)308-3019
E-mail: bfrichason@stcloudstate.edu