From the Air Understanding Aerial Archaeology

Aerial photography is one of the most important and cost-effective ways of recording traces of the past and discovering new sites. It also offers the archaeologist an alternative viewpoint on these archaeological traces, and is one of the most exciting and challenging types of fieldwork. The experiences of the contributors to this volume highlight the role that bias, subjectivity, and perception play in the shaping of flights and in the results themselves. They draw on important aspects of archaeological fieldwork such as experience, intuition, improvisation, emotion, and stress, which are all too often left unarticulated. These contributions from the practitioners, photographers, and interpreters that form the aerial archaeological community present a counterpoint to the traditional textbook.