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Corona Satellite Pictures for Archaeological Studies: A Review and Application to the Lost Forbidden City of the Han–Wei Dynasties

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Abstract

This paper provides a state of the art of the use of declassified satellite Corona for archaeological application and deals with the use of historical archives of Corona and aerial photographs for detecting ancient hidden cultural relics that may be completely lost in the modern landscape veiled by current land uses and land covers. Geospatial analysis is adopted to identify, extract and map the subtle archaeological features and cultural landscape of the lost Han–Wei Forbidden City in the Henan Province (China). It was one of the most important cities of ancient China, served as the capital for a long period, from the Eastern Zhou (2600 BP, Zhou Dynasty) to the Eastern Han and Wei Dynasties (1900–1500 BP). Outputs from our investigations clearly provided evidence of numerous buried structures of potential archaeological interest that were compared with historical documentation and excavations carried out in the area. The geospatial analysis, applied both to aerial photograph and to Corona pictures, enabled us to discover a number of unknown sub-palaces and structures, thus providing new insights for this important archaeological area.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by funding from Hundred Talents Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) (Y5YR0300QM), Youth Director Fund Category-A of Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, CAS, the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the framework of the Great Relevance Project “Smart management of cultural heritage sites in Italy and China: Earth Observation and pilot projects”, the National Key Technology R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2013BAK08B02) and CNES for providing Pleiades data.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Methodologies for Environmental Analysis, National Research Council, C. da Santa Loja, 85050, Tito Scalo, PZ, Italy

    Rosa Lasaponara

  2. Key Laboratory of Digital Earth Science, Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100094, China

    Rosa Lasaponara, Ruixia Yang & Fulong Chen

  3. Zhengzhou Base, International Center on Space Technologies for Natural and Cultural Heritage under the Auspices of UNESCO, Zhengzhou, 450052, China

    Ruixia Yang

  4. Institute for Archaeological and Architectural Heritage, National Research Council, C. da Santa Loja, 85050, Tito Scalo, PZ, Italy

    Nicola Masini

  5. Office for Great Site Protections of Luoyang City, Luoyang, 471000, China

    Xin Li

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  1. Rosa Lasaponara
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  2. Ruixia Yang
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  3. Fulong Chen
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  4. Xin Li
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Correspondence to Ruixia Yang.

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Lasaponara, R., Yang, R., Chen, F. et al. Corona Satellite Pictures for Archaeological Studies: A Review and Application to the Lost Forbidden City of the Han–Wei Dynasties. Surv Geophys 39, 1303–1322 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10712-018-9490-2

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