New investigation to shed light on our heritage

A major archaeology project to help scientists discover unknown historical treasures hidden deep beneath UK soil is being launched by the University of Leeds.

The DART project, which is funded by the Science and Heritage Programme, will use high-tech scanners to discover new heritage sites that traditional investigations may have missed. The team will use advanced sensing techniques that will allow them to hunt out archaeological artefacts without so much as picking up a spade.

For the last century, many archaeological sites have been discovered using simple aerial photography - taking pictures of the ground from planes - to look for subtle signs of features beneath the surface.

Archaeological residues, such as walls, ditches and artefacts, have an effect on the surrounding soils and can alter the way the ground appears from the air. By looking for shadows or changes in soil colour or crop growth, scientists can detect objects buried underground.

However, features hidden beneath heavy soils such as clay cannot always be detected by traditional aerial photos and it is thought that important discoveries could have been missed in these areas.

The DART team, led by Professor Anthony Cohn of the University of Leeds School of Computing, is made up of a consortium of researchers from areas such as computer vision, knowledge engineering, geophysics and soil sciences. In the first major project of its kind the team will use sophisticated aerial and ground based remote sensors to look within and beyond the visual spectrum to detect fragments of heritage that are currently undetectable.

Prof Cohn said: "DART represents an opportunity to re-think the science underpinning heritage detection. There is an archaeological jigsaw buried below the soil and traditional methods have not allowed us to find all of the pieces. It is vital that we find more pieces of this puzzle because we can't protect heritage if we don't know it's there.

"Every discovery increases our understanding of the richness and complexity of the past and finding new sites will not only influence archaeological research and curation but will also have an impact on planning, management and development."

The team will use state of the art remote sensors, such as hyper-spectral scanners which take many photographs at different wavelengths within and outside the visible spectrum. This can help scientists detect things that would be missed by the naked eye, such as tiny changes in the way crops grow that can be seen through infrared imaging.

They will also conduct geophysical surveys, using techniques such as ground penetrating radar, with the aim of finding buried structures or evidence of human disturbance to the natural soil. Comprehensive laboratory analysis of soil samples taken from sites will reveal which techniques to use and their optimal operating frequencies.

Dr Anthony Beck, a University of Leeds Research Fellow and DART Project Champion, said: "Remote sensing relies on being able to detect a contrast between the makeup of archaeological features and their surroundings - i.e. the soil. However, the ability to detect these contrasts is influenced by changes on the surface such as rain, crop and soil type. These factors change seasonally meaning it is harder to detect archaeology at certain times of the year.

"By collecting surveys from a number of sites at different times of the day and year, and comparing these against physical measurements and soil models we will be able to determine the best conditions to undertake new surveys so that more archaeology can be identified."

The sensors will then feed data back dynamically to an online database that will be accessible to archaeologists, academics and even members of the public.