Potentialities and Limitations of Research on VHRS Data: Alexander the Great’s Military Camp at Gaugamela on the Navkur Plain in Kurdish Iraq as a Test Case

Abstract

This paper presents a selected aspect of research conducted within the Gaugamela Project, which seeks to finally identify the location of one of the most important ancient battles: the Battle of Gaugamela (331 BCE). The aim of this study was to discover material remains of the Macedonian military camp on the Navkur Plain in Kurdish Iraq. For this purpose, three very high resolution satellite (VHRS) datasets from Pleiades and WorldView-2 were acquired and subjected to multi-variant image processing (development of different color composites, integration of multispectral and panchromatic images, use of principle component analysis transformation, use of vegetation indices). Documentation of photointerpretation was carried out through the vectorization of features/areas. Due to the character of the sought-after artifacts (remnants of a large enclosure), features were categorized into two types: linear features and areal features. As a result, 19 linear features and 2 areal features were found in the study area of the Mahad hills. However, only a few features fulfilled the expected geometric criteria (layout and size) and were subjected to field groundtruthing, which ended in negative results. It is concluded that no traces have been found that could be interpreted as remnants of an earthen enclosure capable of accommodating around 47,000 soldiers. Further research perspectives are also suggested.