REMOTE SENSING AND ARCHAEOLOGY FROM SPANISH LIDAR-PNOA: IDENTIFYING THE AMPHITHEATRE OF THE ROMAN CITY OF TORREPAREDONES (CÓRDOBA-ANDALUCÍA-SPAIN)

Abstract

Between 2015 and 2016 the Instituto Geográfico Nacional de España (Spanish Geographical Institute) made public the results of a LiDAR flight over the entire national territory. In the case of Andalucía, this flight was done between 2013 and 2014. Among its many applications, our goal was to highlight its use for aerial detection of unknown archaeological remains, which could be identifyed in other spanish roman cities similars to Torreparedones, where the amphitheatre seems has been indentificated by this methods. A good number of the studies on aerial archaeology in Spain based on LiDAR PNOA (National Aerial Orthophoto Plan-acronym in Spanish) do not necessarily entail a subsequent surface exploration. Surelly, LiDAR-PNOA will be the only way of archaeological survey in many cases. For this reason, we are interested in adjusting the method to make this aerial exploration resource useful and reliable, as we expose it here.