Drones over the “Black Desert”: The Advantages of Rotary-Wing UAVs for Complementing Archaeological Fieldwork in the Hard-to-Access Landscapes of Preservation of North-Eastern Jordan

Abstract

The increasing availability and sinking costs of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), commonly known as drones, has resulted in these devices becoming relatively commonplace on archaeological sites. The advantages of being able to rapidly obtain bespoke high-resolution images from the air are conspicuous to anyone familiar with archaeological fieldwork; meanwhile the possibilities of subsequently processing such images together with their metadata to obtain digital elevation models (DEMs) and three-dimensional (3-D) models provide additional bonuses to analysis and interpretation. The recent use of a rotary-wing drone by the Western Harra Survey (WHS), an archaeological project co-directed by the author in the “Black Desert”, or Harra, of north-eastern Jordan, showcases these advantages in the context of a landscape that (a) is subject to negligible transformation processes and (b) is difficult to access, both by vehicle and on foot. By using processed drone imagery to record in detail prehistoric basalt structures visible on the surface and their surroundings, morphological site typologies hypothesised from satellite imagery were confirmed, relative dating within sites ascertained, structural features and damage documented, spatial relationships to natural resources established, offsite features traced, modern threats to heritage catalogued, and practically inaccessible sites investigated. Together, these results, most of which were only obtainable and all of which were obtained more rapidly by using a drone, represent significant insights into this underrepresented region, and provide a case-study for the benefits of these devices in other landscapes of a similar nature.