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Archaeological Exploration in Srirangapatna and Its Environ Through Remote Sensing Analysis

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Abstract

This study involves exploration of archaeological structures in Srirangapatana and virtual reconstruction of Srirangapatana fort using geo-spatial techniques. Antiquity of this river island town goes back to ninth century AD which continued till British rule and hence has abundance of archaeological structures on it. Some of these structures are known and well-maintained while others are unprotected, unexcavated, hidden under thick vegetation or forgotten. To identify archaeological features such as buried/dilapidated/vegetation infested structures/features on ground, we used high resolution multispectral remote sensing data (0.5 and 5.6 m), Cartosat 1 stereo pairs (2.5 m), anaglyphs, historical documents, and analysed them on GIS platform. This study enabled us to: trace the concentric moats and fort-wall by using false colour composite image together with anaglyphs generated from Cartosat 1 stereo pair; explore hitherto unexplored and unexcavated archaeological features; identify unknown and abandoned temples/structures smothered with wild vegetation; locate exact location of currently non-existent site mentioned in historical records; identify the location of buried canal. This study also demonstrates how methodic use of various interpretation keys, image processing and analysis (such as NDVI, DEM, anaglyphs) can help in extracting archaeological features and direct archaeologists for further exploration.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Karnataka Knowledge Commission for providing financial support for carrying out the present work. We extend our gratitude to the Department of Archaeology, Museums and Heritage, Karnataka, for discussions, particularly C.G. Betsurmath and R. Gopal for their inputs and Anil Kumar in accessing archival material. We thank Prof Roddam Narasimha, Prof Ranganathan and Prof H.S. Mukunda for discussions and encouragement. We are grateful to Dr. Baldev Raj, Director, NIAS, for the institutional support and encouragement. We thank KSRSAC, Bengaluru, for providing lab facilities and ISRO, for Satellite Data.

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Correspondence to Ekta Gupta.

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Gupta, E., Das, S. & Rajani, M.B. Archaeological Exploration in Srirangapatna and Its Environ Through Remote Sensing Analysis. J Indian Soc Remote Sens 45, 1057–1063 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12524-017-0659-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12524-017-0659-9

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